Neighborhood

Central Harlem

Manhattan
In the Census-defined PUMA including Central Harlem, according to recent Census data, (in descending order) French and "Niger-Congo languages" each have at least 1000 speakers. English and Spanish varieties are widely spoken in the area as well.
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African-American English

Black English
Harlem has long been an ultimate destination and crucial icon of Black America. African-Americans from all over the south, but particularly states like Georgia and the Carolinas, made their way north to New York during the great migration chronicled in Isabel Wilkerson's book The Warmth of Other Suns, helping to touch off the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s.

Antigua and Barbuda Creole

Creole
Founded in 1934 by 22 Antiguan New Yorkers, the Antigua and Barbuda Progressive Society has been headquarted in its Central Harlem brownstone since 1964 as a central address for those from Antigua and Barbuda living in or passing through New York.

Bahamian Creole

Bahamianese
The Nassau Bahamas Association of New York, now based on 137th Street in Harlem, has existed for over a century as a focal point for Bahamian New Yorkers of various backgrounds.

Bambara

(ߓߡߊߣߊ߲ߞߊ߲ (ߒߞߏ
Bambara speakers are likely to be found within the fast-growing community of Malian New Yorkers, some of whom do business at the Malcolm Shabazz Harlem Market, but the largest number of whom are reported to live in the Bronx, with a smaller number in Queens. The Malian Community Center is one community institution.

Baoulé

Baoulé
According to one of its leaders, a community of speakers of multiple varieties of Bété, a language of Ivory Coast, has formed in recent years, with some individuals living in East New York and gathering at a Baptist church in Harlem, joined as well by speakers of other Ivorian languages including Baoulé, Ebrié, and Guro.

Black American Sign Language

BASL
Black American Sign Language has been described as a variety of ASL developed primarily in segregated schools for the deaf in the Southern US, though it has since spread to some extent among African-American communities elsewhere, including some in New York. Among several gathering places for Black Deaf ASL users has been the House of Justice (HOJ) Deaf Club at the National Action Network, a civil rights organization in Harlem.

Dyula

(ߖߎ߬ߟߊ߬ߞߊ߲ (ߒߞߏ
Dyula has long been an important lingua franca known to many in Ivory Coast, and many Ivorian New Yorkers who have been involved in trade or spent significant time in Abidjan know the language. Dyula speakers may be found at mosques frequented by Ivorians in Harlem and the Bronx, as well as in a small Ivorian community in East New York.

Ebrié

Ebrié
According to one of its leaders, a community of speakers of multiple varieties of Bété, a language of Ivory Coast, has formed in recent years, with some individuals living in East New York and gathering at a Baptist church in Harlem, joined as well by speakers of other Ivorian languages including Baoulé, Ebrié, and Guro.

Finnish

Suomi
Finnish immigration to the U.S. hit a peak between 1910 and 1925, forming a strong community within the wider Scandinavian matrix of Sunset Park, near port and dock areas of Brooklyn. This "Finntown" grew around the 8th Avenue Alku and Alku Toinen, two co-ops built by Finnish socialists in 1916. Known as the first non-profit housing cooperatives in the U.S., these experiments inspired dozens of other (Finnish and non-Finnish) cooperative houses, restaurants, stores, and garages around Sunset Park. By the 1970s, most Sunset Park Finns had moved out to Long Island, New Jersey, and Connecticut, but a Finnish church remains in Greenwich Village, and there are scattered speakers throughout the New York area. In the early 20th century, another major community, now gone, was in Harlem, concentrated east of Lenox Avenue in the 120s.

French

Français
French has a long and complex history in New York, beginning with Huguenot refugees who played an important role in the city's early history and continuing with an influx of French immigrants in the 19th century who founded institutions in Chelsea and points north, as well as French Canadians whose national parish church until 1957 was St. Jean Baptiste in Lenox Hill. In the last decades of the 20th century, large numbers of speakers of French varieties arrived in the city from the Caribbean (especially from Haiti, where most speak the related Haitian Creole, but others prefer Standard French) as well as from West Africa, where French is an important lingua franca. Increasing numbers of French speakers from France and Canada have arrived in the city as well. A newer expat community is centered in part on the large French-American School in Larchmont.

Fulani

Pulaar
New York is home to a substantial Fulani-speaking community, based primarily in the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Harlem. In West Africa, including Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea, Senegal etc., the language is called Pulaar and the people call themselves Fulbhe. Further east (Burkina Faso, Niger, Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad etc.), the language is called Fulfulde and people call themselves Fulani. Only in Guinea do Fulani speakers constitute a majority of the national population. "Fulani" should be considered a language group with significant internal diversity, including at least 9 languages spoken in different countries with separate codes in Ethnologue. There are at least three Fuutas, or Fula regions, according to local community leader Ben Jalloh: Fuuta Jalong, Fuuta Toro, Futa Masina. Some dialect differences may come from French, Wolof, or Hausa influence. A significant number of speakers in New York come from Guinea, Senegal, and Mauritania in particular, with many members of the Brooklyn community from the Fuuta Koobe around the Senegal river in present-day Mauritania and Senegal.

Gagnoa Bété

Gagnoa Bété
According to one of its leaders, a community of speakers of multiple varieties of Bété, a language of Ivory Coast, has formed in recent years, with some individuals living in East New York and gathering at a Baptist church in Harlem, joined as well by speakers of other Ivorian languages including Baoulé, Ebrié, and Guro.

Geʽez

ግዕዝ
Ge'ez, also called Classical Ethiopic, is a liturgical language native to East Africa. Though spoken in Ethiopia and Eritrea throughout the first millennium CE, the language has been exclusively written since the 13th century. The golden age of Ge'ez literature ran from the 13th to the 17th century, producing important Ethiopian texts like Mats'hafe Berhan ("The Book of Light") and Fetha Negest ("Laws of the Kings"). Unlike most other Semitic languages, Ge'ez is written and read from left to right. Harlem and the Bronx are home to two Ethiopian Orthodox Churches, where core Ge'ez texts continue to be read and studied.

Guiberoua Bété

Guiberoua Bété
According to one of its leaders, a community of speakers of multiple varieties of Bété, a language of Ivory Coast, has formed in recent years, with some individuals living in East New York and gathering at a Baptist church in Harlem, joined as well by speakers of other Ivorian languages including Baoulé, Ebrié, and Guro.

Gullah

Geechees
Gullah, a creole language with roots in English and various West and Central African languages, is spoken by Gullah-Geechee people predominately along the Southeast coast of the US, specifically the Sea Islands of Georgia and South Carolina. Many probably began arriving in New York with the Great Migration of African-Americans from those states in the first half of the 20th century, which also saw increasing displacement from the Sea Islands. In the late 1970s, CUNY linguist William A. Stewart documented the language with the help of New York's Gullah-speaking community, estimated to be 1,000 strong at the time. Prof. Stewart found Gullah-Geechee people hesitant to call their native tongue a proper language, and one goal of his work was to counter this sense of shame, common to speakers of oral languages, by validating Gullah's status as a language. A significant community of Gullah speakers lived within the African-American community in Bed-Stuy at the time, with others in Harlem.

Guro

Golo
According to one of its leaders, a community of speakers of multiple varieties of Bété, a language of Ivory Coast, has formed in recent years, with some individuals living in East New York and gathering at a Baptist church in Harlem, joined as well by speakers of other Ivorian languages including Baoulé, Ebrié, and Guro.

Hassaniya Arabic

حسانية
A broad representation of the world's Arabic varieties, as used by Muslims, Christians, and Jews from West Africa to Iraq, can be found across the metropolitan area — although many of them are mutually unintelligible with each other, speakers are able to communicate in the Modern Standard Arabic known as al-fuṣḥā ("the purest", and there is often widespread familiarity with larger varieties like Egyptian Arabic. In the second half of the 20th century, what had been primarily a Levantine Arabic speaking community (by then mostly in Brooklyn) was joined by significant numbers of Egyptian Arabic and Yemeni Arabic speakers, as well as smaller numbers of many other varieties found throughout the city. Significant Arabic-speaking areas include Bay Ridge, Astoria, the Bronx (for West African Arabic speakers), Yonkers, and Paterson, New Jersey. Classical (or Qu'ranic) Arabic flourishes widely at mosques like the Islamic Cultural Center on the Upper East Side and the Jamaica Muslim Center in Queens as well schools like Al-Noor in Brooklyn. Jewish varieties of Arabic, often linked to the local variety of the particular country of origin, are still spoken to some degree among the sizeable Middle Eastern and North African Jewish communities in the city, especially in Brooklyn.

Hausa

هَوُسَا
Hausa speakers in the city may come from a number of places in West Africa and the Sahel, including northern Nigeria, Niger, and Ghana. The total number of users of the language internationally is around 75 million, accoridng to Ethnologue, with two thirds in Nigeria and nearly a third in total being second-language speakers. While thought to be less numerous than Yoruba and Igbo speakers in New York, Hausa speakers are nonetheless present in the large West African community in the Bronx and at Nigerian Muslim institutions in Brooklyn's Fort Greene, Clinton Hill, and East New York, as well as in Harlem and on Staten Island.

Juba Arabic

عربية جوبا
A broad representation of the world's Arabic varieties, as used by Muslims, Christians, and Jews from West Africa to Iraq, can be found across the metropolitan area — although many of them are mutually unintelligible with each other, speakers are able to communicate in the Modern Standard Arabic known as al-fuṣḥā ("the purest", and there is often widespread familiarity with larger varieties like Egyptian Arabic. In the second half of the 20th century, what had been primarily a Levantine Arabic speaking community (by then mostly in Brooklyn) was joined by significant numbers of Egyptian Arabic and Yemeni Arabic speakers, as well as smaller numbers of many other varieties found throughout the city. Significant Arabic-speaking areas include Bay Ridge, Astoria, the Bronx (for West African Arabic speakers), Yonkers, and Paterson, New Jersey. Classical (or Qu'ranic) Arabic flourishes widely at mosques like the Islamic Cultural Center on the Upper East Side and the Jamaica Muslim Center in Queens as well schools like Al-Noor in Brooklyn. Jewish varieties of Arabic, often linked to the local variety of the particular country of origin, are still spoken to some degree among the sizeable Middle Eastern and North African Jewish communities in the city, especially in Brooklyn.

Kikongo

Kikongo
A relatively small but growing Congolese community is scattered in different neighborhoods across the city, though one focal point has been Harlem (whose Maysles Cinema has been home to the "Congo in Harlem" film festival in recent years). Among the native languages spoken by Congolese New Yorkers in addition to French are Luba-Kasai, Luba-Katanga, Lingala (the lingua franca of the capital Kinshasa), Kikongo, and Mongo, and there are likely others.

Lingala

Lingala
A relatively small but growing Congolese community is scattered in different neighborhoods across the city, though one focal point has been Harlem (whose Maysles Cinema has been home to the "Congo in Harlem" film festival in recent years). Among the native languages spoken by Congolese New Yorkers in addition to French are Luba-Kasai, Luba-Katanga, Lingala (the lingua franca of the capital Kinshasa), Kikongo, and Mongo, and there are likely others.

Luba-Katanga

Luba-Katanga
A relatively small but growing Congolese community is scattered in different neighborhoods across the city, though one focal point has been Harlem (whose Maysles Cinema has been home to the "Congo in Harlem" film festival in recent years). Among the native languages spoken by Congolese New Yorkers in addition to French are Luba-Kasai, Luba-Katanga, Lingala (the lingua franca of the capital Kinshasa), Kikongo, and Mongo, and there are likely others.

Luo

Dholuo
A small number of Luo speakers are reported as being part of the metropolitan area's relatively small and scattered Kenyan community—the most famous being actress Lupita Nyong'o, a native speaker (born in Mexico City) who lives in Brooklyn.

Mandinka

(لغة مندنكا ,ߡߊ߲߬ߘߌ߲߬ߞߊ (ߒߞߏ
The Mande language family comprises dozens of related languages spoken by tens of millions of people across West Africa. The most widely spoken Mande languages in New York belong to a subgroup called Manding, originally connected to the Mali empire which lasted until the 17th century and today forming a language and dialect continuum from Senegal to Burkina Faso. Among the most widely spoken Manding languages both in West Africa and New York are Bambara (Mali), Dyula (Ivory Coast and Burkina Faso), Maninka (Guinea), and Mandinka (Gambia), which are substantially mutually intelligible. In fact, those who use the N'ko alphabet may refer to these varieties collectively as N'ko (which roughly translates to "I say" in all these varieties). New York today is home to over 12,000 "Mande" speakers according to (the likely very low figure in the) 2015-2019 American Community Survey data, with speakers often living near each other in parts of Harlem and the central Bronx.

Maninka

(ߡߊߣߌ߲ߞߊߞߊ߲ (ߒߞߏ
The Mande language family comprises dozens of related languages spoken by tens of millions of people across West Africa. The most widely spoken Mande languages in New York belong to a subgroup called Manding, originally connected to the Mali empire which lasted until the 17th century and today forming a language and dialect continuum from Senegal to Burkina Faso. Among the most widely spoken Manding languages both in West Africa and New York are Bambara (Mali), Dyula (Ivory Coast and Burkina Faso), Maninka (Guinea), and Mandinka (Gambia), which are substantially mutually intelligible. In fact, those who use the N'ko alphabet may refer to these varieties collectively as N'ko (which roughly translates to "I say" in all these varieties). New York today is home to over 12,000 "Mande" speakers according to (the likely very low figure in the) 2015-2019 American Community Survey data, with speakers often living near each other in parts of Harlem and the central Bronx.

Mongo

Mongo
A relatively small but growing Congolese community is scattered in different neighborhoods across the city, though one focal point has been Harlem (whose Maysles Cinema has been home to the "Congo in Harlem" film festival in recent years). Among the native languages spoken by Congolese New Yorkers in addition to French are Luba-Kasai, Luba-Katanga, Lingala (the lingua franca of the capital Kinshasa), Kikongo, and Mongo, and there are likely others.

Montserrat Creole

Creole
Another venerable institution of Caribbean Harlem, the Montserrat Progessive Society has existed as a mutual aid organization for Montserratian New Yorkers for nearly a century and also provided aid in various forms from the New York community to Montserrat itself.

Mossi

Mòoré
For the growing community of several thousand Burkinabé New Yorkers (from Burkina Faso), Mossi is a national language and lingua franca in addition to French. Burkinabés are now settling throughout the city and surrounding area, establishing a range of institutions and community hubs from the well-known music venue The Shrine in Harlem to the Burkina Business Center in the Bronx, and restaurants like Zaca Cafe in Bed-Stuy and Burkindi in Newark.

Northern Sotho

Sepedi
Several thousand South African New Yorkers live in neighborhoods across the city — besides South African English, there are at least small numbers of speakers of Afrikaans, Xhosa, Zulu, Northern Sotho (also spoken in Lesotho), Ndebele (also spoken in Zimbabwe), Swati (also spoken in Eswatini), and Tswana (also spoken in Botswana). All are official languages of South Africa today, testifying to an extraordinary multilingualism also embodied by comedian and New York resident Trevor Noah, who reportedly speaks (a distinctly South African-inflected) English, Afrikaans, Southern Sotho, Tsonga, Tswana, Xhosa, and Zulu.

Oromo

Afan Oromoo
Oromo, one of the major languages of Ethiopia, is known to have at least some speakers in New York, including in Harlem where there are speakers of other Ethiopian communities, but little has been reported about the community.

Senoufo

Senoufo
Senoufo is a cover term for a cluster of related languages spoken principally in northern Ivory Coast. Given the significant Ivorian community in Harlem and the Bronx, it's likely that multiple Senoufo languages are spoken in the city. NYC Department of Education data (from the Citywide Parent's Preferred Language Report 2011-2017) indicate that several hundred Senoufo-speaking families may be enrolling children in city public schools each year.

Serer

Seereer
Besides the national language Wolof and Fulani, Serer may be the most widely known language of Senegal within New York's sizeable and growing Senegalese community — with the largest numbers living in Harlem and in pockets across the Bronx.

Somali

Soomaali
New York's Somali community, today much smaller than those in Minnesota and elsewhere around the country, is likely one of the oldest in the US, beginning with seaman in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Safari, in Harlem, is thought to be the city's only Somali restaurant as of 2020. Minority languages of Somalia — Af-Maay and Zigula — are spoken by members of those refugee communities in Utica, north of the city.

Songhay

Songhay
Not much information is known, but there appear to be communities speaking different Songhay varieties from both Mali (e.g. Koyraboro Senni) and Niger (Zarma) in the Bronx and in Harlem.

Swahili

Kiswahili
Swahili speakers in New York typically hail from Kenya or Tanzania, though the language is also a lingua franca more widely across East Africa, so there are also speakers from Uganda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Comoros, and other nations. Swahili is also one of the most commonly learned African languages by non-Africans. While more Swahili speakers may live in other U.S. cities such as Chicago and Washington D.C., the language in New York has a cosmopolitan user base, including in Harlem, Brooklyn, New Jersey, and elsewhere. A number of Kenyans live in various Central New Jersey towns, as well as Paterson and Jersey City, where there are 1,513 Swahili speakers according to 2015-2019 American Community Survey data.

Tonga

Chitonga
At least one speaker of Tonga from Zimbabwe, working as a translator, was reported as living in Harlem in 2018.

Tuareg

ⵜⴰⵎⴰⵌⴰⵆ
At least a few speakers of Tuareg varieties from Saharan areas of Mali, Niger, and possibly elsewhere have been reported as living in Harlem, though there are almost certainly others elsewhere in the metropolitan area.

Tumbuka

Chitumbuka
At least one Tumbuka speaker was reported as living in Harlem as of 2018.

Wolof

Wolof
While French is the official language of Senegal, Wolof is the most widely spoken language and serves as a lingua franca across various ethnolinguistic communities in the country. Significant waves of Senegalese immigration to the U.S. began in the 1970s, extending well-organized diaspora networks both in the region and in Europe (especially those associated with the Murid Sufi brotherhood based in Touba). Young Senegalese merchants, usually young men, made a living as street vendors selling a wide variety of products across Manhattan and in turn shipping American products back to Africa. Initially living in old Manhattan hotels set up for single bachelors, many Senegalese New Yorkers converged on Central Harlem, with West 116th between Malcom X and Frederick Douglass becoming Le Petit Senegal. Wolof speakers, of whom today there are thousands in the city, have also moved further north in Harlem, and to parts of Brooklyn, and especially to the Bronx. Increasingly diverse within itself, the Senegalese migration also paved the way for other traders and immigrants from Francophone West Africa.
Additional languages spoken in this neighborhood:
  • Pana
  • Susu
  • Tem
  • Yiddish
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