Neighborhood

Elmhurst

Queens
In the Census-defined PUMA including Elmhurst & South Corona, according to recent Census data, (in descending order) Bengali, Mandarin, Nepali, Cantonese, Hindi, and Tibetan each hold more than 1000 speakers. English, Spanish, and Tagalog varieties are widely spoken in the area as well.
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Languages with a significant site in this neighborhood, marked by a point on the map:

Acehnese

Bahsa Acèh
New York's relatively new Indonesian community is several thousand strong and growing, with the largest concentration in Elmhurst, and the Al-Hikmah mosque in Astoria serving as an important community center for Indonesian Muslims (while churches serve an analogous role for Christians). Indonesian serves as a lingua franca to which all Indonesians are increasingly shifting, but the New York community is highly multilingual with numerous speakers of Javanese, Manado Malay, Sundanese, and a dozen other languages.

Bahing

किराती-बायुङ
The Endangered Language Alliance interviewed Bahing speaker Suku Rai at the Kirat Mangkhim Community Center in Jackson Heights in 2016 on her life, her community, and her religious experiences in Nepal and New York.

Balinese

Basa Bali
New York's relatively new Indonesian community is several thousand strong and growing, with the largest concentration in Elmhurst, and the Al-Hikmah mosque in Astoria serving as an important community center for Indonesian Muslims (while churches serve an analogous role for Christians). Indonesian serves as a lingua franca to which all Indonesians are increasingly shifting, but the New York community is highly multilingual with numerous speakers of Javanese, Manado Malay, Sundanese, and a dozen other languages.

Banjarese

Bahasa Banjar
New York's relatively new Indonesian community is several thousand strong and growing, with the largest concentration in Elmhurst, and the Al-Hikmah mosque in Astoria serving as an important community center for Indonesian Muslims (while churches serve an analogous role for Christians). Indonesian serves as a lingua franca to which all Indonesians are increasingly shifting, but the New York community is highly multilingual with numerous speakers of Javanese, Manado Malay, Sundanese, and a dozen other languages.

Bantawa

किराती-किरावा
A large event held by the Kirat Rai Society of America drew some 300 people in December 2019, with both a large number of Rai and a large number of Nepali New Yorkers from other ethnolinguistic groups. The Kirat Rai Society of America is one organization representing members of several dozen different ethnolinguistic groups of eastern Nepal considered Indigenous to the region, but not Sunwar, Limbu, or Bhutanese Rai, who have their own organizations, or Yakkha, of whom there may be a small number. Almost all groups, after centuries of pressure, are shifting to Nepali, with the largest Rai language Bantawa sometimes also serving as a kind of common language. Estimates of the New York Rai community, centered in Queens, ranged from a few hundred to as many as 1,000. Besides Bantawa, of which there may be dozens of speakers, there are a significant number of Chamling speakers, some Khaling, Nachhiring, and Sampang speakers and reportedly a few speakers of Kulung and Thulung.

Betawi Malay

Melayu Betawi
New York's relatively new Indonesian community is several thousand strong and growing, with the largest concentration in Elmhurst, and the Al-Hikmah mosque in Astoria serving as an important community center for Indonesian Muslims (while churches serve an analogous role for Christians). Indonesian serves as a lingua franca to which all Indonesians are increasingly shifting, but the New York community is highly multilingual with numerous speakers of Javanese, Manado Malay, Sundanese, and a dozen other languages.

Buginese

ᨅᨔ ᨕᨘᨁᨗ
New York's relatively new Indonesian community is several thousand strong and growing, with the largest concentration in Elmhurst, and the Al-Hikmah mosque in Astoria serving as an important community center for Indonesian Muslims (while churches serve an analogous role for Christians). Indonesian serves as a lingua franca to which all Indonesians are increasingly shifting, but the New York community is highly multilingual with numerous speakers of Javanese, Manado Malay, Sundanese, and a dozen other languages.

Burmese

မြန်မာဘာသာ
New York's Burmese community is growing fast, particularly in areas of western Queens (Elmhurst, Woodhaven, Sunnyside, and Jackson Heights), where at least 7,000 immigrants from Myanmar currently reside, according to 2015-2019 American Community Survey data—and also southern Brooklyn. Many are Christian refugees from minority groups who fled the country's military rule and decades of civil war, as well as a reported small number Rohingya Muslims facing extreme persecution. Other community members cite educational opportunities as their motivation for immigrating. The vast majority of Burmese in Myanmar are Buddhist, and there are many ethnic Burmans and other Myanmar Buddhists who gather at the Buddhist temple in Brooklyn's Prospect Heights, which has a larger facility in New Jersey. Many of the Christian groups gather at Glendale's Myanmar Baptist Church. Some have found work in Manhattan's Diamond District. Besides Burmese (including the Dawei and Intha varieties), there are speakers of several varieties of Chin, Kachin, Karen, Lahu, Mon, Pa'O, Rakhine, Shan, and Wa, and perhaps other languages.

Chantyal

छन्त्याल
Speakers of Chantyal from the Himalayan zone in northern Nepal have a presence among all the other Himalayan groups in Queens — the last name Chantyal, as with some other groups from Nepal, being one indication — and an association, or samaj, has been launched by individuals living in and around Maryland.

Classical Tibetan

ཆོས་སྐད་
Tibetan-speaking New Yorkers have come from across the culturally and religiously Tibetan world, including many refugees who immigrate via India and Nepal. There are some institutions more oriented towards Westerners with an interest in Tibet, such as Tibet House in Manhattan, but most Tibetans have settled in the Queens neighborhoods of Astoria, Sunnyside, Woodside, Jackson Heights, Elmhurst, and Corona, with smaller numbers in Brooklyn, the Bronx, and others now branching out elsewhere — with important religious centers also upstate in Woodstock and Walden. (ELA recognizes that the Chinese government's rule in Tibet is disputed.)

Colombian Spanish

Español Colombiano
Large numbers of Colombians immigrated New York, especially the area around Jackson Heights dubbed Chapinero after a fashionable Bogota neighborhood, starting in the 1960s and 70s. Today Queens' Centro Civico Colombiano remains an important hub, but newer communities have also emerged in College Point; Elizabeth, New Jersey; and elsewhere.

Dawei Burmese

တောင်ရိုးလူမျိုး
New York's Burmese community is growing fast, particularly in areas of western Queens (Elmhurst, Woodhaven, Sunnyside, and Jackson Heights), where at least 7,000 immigrants from Myanmar currently reside, according to 2015-2019 American Community Survey data—and also southern Brooklyn. Many are Christian refugees from minority groups who fled the country's military rule and decades of civil war, as well as a reported small number Rohingya Muslims facing extreme persecution. Other community members cite educational opportunities as their motivation for immigrating. The vast majority of Burmese in Myanmar are Buddhist, and there are many ethnic Burmans and other Myanmar Buddhists who gather at the Buddhist temple in Brooklyn's Prospect Heights, which has a larger facility in New Jersey. Many of the Christian groups gather at Glendale's Myanmar Baptist Church. Some have found work in Manhattan's Diamond District. Besides Burmese (including the Dawei and Intha varieties), there are speakers of several varieties of Chin, Kachin, Karen, Lahu, Mon, Pa'O, Rakhine, Shan, and Wa, and perhaps other languages.

Dolpo

གདོལ་པོལི་སྐད་
According to one community member, there are approximately 50 speakers of the Tibetic language variety Dolpo living primarily in Sunnyside and Elmhurst.

Hokkien

闽南话, Bân-lâm-gú
A large wave of working-class Fujianese speakers, especially from in and around the city of Fuzhou in China's Fujian Province, arrived in New York in the 1980s and 90s, after China loosened its emigration restrictions. At the time, Manhattan's Chinatown was dominated by Cantonese speakers from China's Guangdong Province, so Fujianese people settled in and around East Broadway, where Chinatown slowly expanded. Today, most Fujianese New Yorkers speak Mandarin as well and have spread across the city's Chinese neighborhoods, including Sunset Park, Bensonhurst, and Flushing. The Fujianese spoken in Fuzhou is also called Eastern Min, highlighting its connections to a wider group of related Sinitic languages. Also spoken to a lesser degree in New York are forms of Northern Min, from the northern part of Fujian: one example being several speakers from the area around Jianyang and Wuyishan, where neighboring villages may speak very differently. Forms of Southern Min are also related and to some extent heard in New York's Chinese neighborhoods, including Hainanese, Teochew, and Taiwanese — the latter also called Hokkien and widely spoken in the Southeast Asian Chinese diaspora.

Indonesian

Bahasa Indonesia
New York's relatively new Indonesian community is several thousand strong and growing, with the largest concentration in Elmhurst, and the Al-Hikmah mosque in Astoria serving as an important community center for Indonesian Muslims (while churches serve an analogous role for Christians). Indonesian serves as a lingua franca to which all Indonesians are increasingly shifting, but the New York community is highly multilingual with numerous speakers of Javanese, Manado Malay, Sundanese, and a dozen other languages.

Intha Burmese

အင်းသားလူမျိုး
New York's Burmese community is growing fast, particularly in areas of western Queens (Elmhurst, Woodhaven, Sunnyside, and Jackson Heights), where at least 7,000 immigrants from Myanmar currently reside, according to 2015-2019 American Community Survey data—and also southern Brooklyn. Many are Christian refugees from minority groups who fled the country's military rule and decades of civil war, as well as a reported small number Rohingya Muslims facing extreme persecution. Other community members cite educational opportunities as their motivation for immigrating. The vast majority of Burmese in Myanmar are Buddhist, and there are many ethnic Burmans and other Myanmar Buddhists who gather at the Buddhist temple in Brooklyn's Prospect Heights, which has a larger facility in New Jersey. Many of the Christian groups gather at Glendale's Myanmar Baptist Church. Some have found work in Manhattan's Diamond District. Besides Burmese (including the Dawei and Intha varieties), there are speakers of several varieties of Chin, Kachin, Karen, Lahu, Mon, Pa'O, Rakhine, Shan, and Wa, and perhaps other languages.

Isan

ภาษาอีสาน
Thai immigration to New York began in the 1960s, after U.S. armed forces arrived in Thailand during the Vietnam War, with many Thai women marrying American soldiers and joining them when they returned home after service. By the 1980s, Thai immigrants were arriving in America at a rate of roughly 6,500 per year, often driven by employment opportunities in major cities like Los Angeles and New York. While the largest Thai communities are concentrated in Woodside, Elmhurst, and Jackson Heights in Queens, Thai speakers live throughout the metropolitan area, and there are major temples in Queens, the Bronx, Westchester, and Long Island. Many families own restaurants, with one hub known as Thai Town, along Manhattan's Ninth Avenue, from roughly 45th to 55th Street. Thai New Yorkers from the country's north are most likely to speak Northern Thai, which is related but not mutually intelligible with (Central) Thai, while some northeasterners speak the distinct Isan variety.

Javanese

Basa Jawa
New York's relatively new Indonesian community is several thousand strong and growing, with the largest concentration in Elmhurst, and the Al-Hikmah mosque in Astoria serving as an important community center for Indonesian Muslims (while churches serve an analogous role for Christians). Indonesian serves as a lingua franca to which all Indonesians are increasingly shifting, but the New York community is highly multilingual with numerous speakers of Javanese, Manado Malay, Sundanese, and a dozen other languages.

Karen

ကညီကျိာ်
New York's Burmese community is growing fast, particularly in areas of western Queens (Elmhurst, Woodhaven, Sunnyside, and Jackson Heights), where at least 7,000 immigrants from Myanmar currently reside, according to 2015-2019 American Community Survey data—and also southern Brooklyn. Many are Christian refugees from minority groups who fled the country's military rule and decades of civil war, as well as a reported small number Rohingya Muslims facing extreme persecution. Other community members cite educational opportunities as their motivation for immigrating. The vast majority of Burmese in Myanmar are Buddhist, and there are many ethnic Burmans and other Myanmar Buddhists who gather at the Buddhist temple in Brooklyn's Prospect Heights, which has a larger facility in New Jersey. Many of the Christian groups gather at Glendale's Myanmar Baptist Church. Some have found work in Manhattan's Diamond District. Besides Burmese (including the Dawei and Intha varieties), there are speakers of several varieties of Chin, Kachin, Karen, Lahu, Mon, Pa'O, Rakhine, Shan, and Wa, and perhaps other languages.

Kariu

Haruku
New York's relatively new Indonesian community is several thousand strong and growing, with the largest concentration in Elmhurst, and the Al-Hikmah mosque in Astoria serving as an important community center for Indonesian Muslims (while churches serve an analogous role for Christians). Indonesian serves as a lingua franca to which all Indonesians are increasingly shifting, but the New York community is highly multilingual with numerous speakers of Javanese, Manado Malay, Sundanese, and a dozen other languages.

Khaling

किराती-खालिङ
A large event held by the Kirat Rai Society of America drew some 300 people in December 2019, with both a large number of Rai and a large number of Nepali New Yorkers from other ethnolinguistic groups. The Kirat Rai Society of America is one organization representing members of several dozen different ethnolinguistic groups of eastern Nepal considered Indigenous to the region, but not Sunwar, Limbu, or Bhutanese Rai, who have their own organizations, or Yakkha, of whom there may be a small number. Almost all groups, after centuries of pressure, are shifting to Nepali, with the largest Rai language Bantawa sometimes also serving as a kind of common language. Estimates of the New York Rai community, centered in Queens, ranged from a few hundred to as many as 1,000. Besides Bantawa, of which there may be dozens of speakers, there are a significant number of Chamling speakers, some Khaling, Nachhiring, and Sampang speakers and reportedly a few speakers of Kulung and Thulung.

Kham Tibetan

ཁམས་སྐད་
Kham Tibetan is a broad term covering some of the diverse Tibetic language varieties spoken in Kham, the traditional province of eastern Tibet. Their tremendous variety makes them hard to classify, and not all are even mutually intelligible with each other, let alone other forms of Tibetan. Among the organizations representing Khampa New Yorkers in Queens are Tibetan Dege Society of North America and the Tibetan Dhokham Lithang Organization, for those from Dege and Litang respectively. (ELA recognizes that the Chinese government's rule in Tibet, where this language is spoken, is disputed.)

Kyirong

སྐྱིད་གྲོང་སྐད་
Hundreds of Kyirong people, with roots on a segment of the Nepal-Tibet border, live mostly within the wider Himalayan community in Sunnyside, Jackson Heights, and Elmhurst. The community organization Kyidong Kyiduk has an annual picnic, retreat, and dadue (archery) competition every year, and there is even a soccer team from the community known as Team Kyidong. (ELA recognizes that the Chinese government's rule in Tibet, where this language is spoken, is disputed.)

Lahu

Ladhof
New York's Burmese community is growing fast, particularly in areas of western Queens (Elmhurst, Woodhaven, Sunnyside, and Jackson Heights), where at least 7,000 immigrants from Myanmar currently reside, according to 2015-2019 American Community Survey data—and also southern Brooklyn. Many are Christian refugees from minority groups who fled the country's military rule and decades of civil war, as well as a reported small number Rohingya Muslims facing extreme persecution. Other community members cite educational opportunities as their motivation for immigrating. The vast majority of Burmese in Myanmar are Buddhist, and there are many ethnic Burmans and other Myanmar Buddhists who gather at the Buddhist temple in Brooklyn's Prospect Heights, which has a larger facility in New Jersey. Many of the Christian groups gather at Glendale's Myanmar Baptist Church. Some have found work in Manhattan's Diamond District. Besides Burmese (including the Dawei and Intha varieties), there are speakers of several varieties of Chin, Kachin, Karen, Lahu, Mon, Pa'O, Rakhine, Shan, and Wa, and perhaps other languages.

Lao

ພາສາລາວ
The Southeast Asian refugee community that formed in the Bronx following the Vietnam War and the Khmer Rouge genocide in Cambodia, today represented in part by the organization Mekong NYC, is substantially Vietnamese- and Khmer-speaking, but there have also reportedly been individuals who speak Lao (some of whom are also in the Thai area of Elmhurst) as well as Hmong and Mien, the two largest non-national languages spoken by Southeast Asian Americans, which are historically related but also highly internally diverse. Following the Vietnam War, many more speakers of these languages went as refugees to California, Minnesota, and elsewhere. One Hmong speaker reports that several dozen White and Green Hmong, many of whom came via the midwest, are now scattered around New York.

Limbu

ᤕᤠᤰᤌᤢᤱ ᤐᤠᤴ
Within the small but growing world of Kiranti New York, centered on Queens and reflecting mostly recent arrivals from eastern Nepal, there are numerous speakers of Limbu, though not all necessarily speak the language as people shift to Nepali.

Limi

ལི་མི་སྐད​་
Organized in the North America Limi Kyiduk, around 120 people speaking the Tibetic language variety Limi, particularly from the town of Dzong, live in Woodside and Sunnyside, with a few in Corona and near Cortelyou in Brooklyn. (ELA recognizes that the Chinese government's rule in Tibet, where this language is spoken, is disputed.)

Madurese

Basa Mathura
New York's relatively new Indonesian community is several thousand strong and growing, with the largest concentration in Elmhurst, and the Al-Hikmah mosque in Astoria serving as an important community center for Indonesian Muslims (while churches serve an analogous role for Christians). Indonesian serves as a lingua franca to which all Indonesians are increasingly shifting, but the New York community is highly multilingual with numerous speakers of Javanese, Manado Malay, Sundanese, and a dozen other languages.

Makassarese

ᨅᨔ ᨆᨀᨔᨑ
New York's relatively new Indonesian community is several thousand strong and growing, with the largest concentration in Elmhurst, and the Al-Hikmah mosque in Astoria serving as an important community center for Indonesian Muslims (while churches serve an analogous role for Christians). Indonesian serves as a lingua franca to which all Indonesians are increasingly shifting, but the New York community is highly multilingual with numerous speakers of Javanese, Manado Malay, Sundanese, and a dozen other languages.

Malay

Bahasa Melayu
Varieties of Malay are spoken across Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, and Brunei. Many Malaysian-born New Yorkers are ethnic Chinese, for whom Cantonese or other Chinese varieties are the mother tongue, with Malay as a second language. At least a small number of speakers of Brunei Malay may be associated with the sultanate's UN Mission. Not only are Malay and Indonesian closely related, but some members of the broader Indonesian community may speak Malay varieties including Betawi Malay, Central Malay, and Manado Malay.

Mamuju

Mamuju
Mamuju is a language spoken in the newly formed West Sulawesi province of Indonesia, with approximately 160,000 speakers. In New York, the Endangered Language Alliance has worked with Husni Husain, a native speaker who has been living in the United States for the last several decades, now in the area of the Indonesian community in Elmhurst. Husni is perhaps the sole speaker of Mamuju in New York. Read more here.

Manado Malay

Melayu Manado
New York's relatively new Indonesian community is several thousand strong and growing, with the largest concentration in Elmhurst, and the Al-Hikmah mosque in Astoria serving as an important community center for Indonesian Muslims (while churches serve an analogous role for Christians). Indonesian serves as a lingua franca to which all Indonesians are increasingly shifting, but the New York community is highly multilingual with numerous speakers of Javanese, Manado Malay, Sundanese, and a dozen other languages.

Mandarin

普通话, 國語
Although it was not widely spoken in New York until recent decades, Mandarin today is probably today the city's third most widely spoken language and a lingua franca connecting Chinese New Yorkers from a variety of linguistic backgrounds—though not all speak it and in certain neighborhoods Cantonese or Fujianese, for example, remain important. Numerous, largely mutually intelligible Mandarin varieties are spoken in the city, from the originally Beijing-based standard "Putonghua" promoted by the mainland government to the Taiwanese Mandarin most widely used there. Particularly in Flushing there are also many speakers of Northeast Mandarin (from the provinces of Liaoning, Jilin, and Heilongjiang) as well as of Southwest Mandarin (particularly those from Sichuan), as well as a growing community of Hui (Muslim) Chinese who speak forms of Northwestern Mandarin related historically to Dungan.

Manggarai

Manggarai
New York's relatively new Indonesian community is several thousand strong and growing, with the largest concentration in Elmhurst, and the Al-Hikmah mosque in Astoria serving as an important community center for Indonesian Muslims (while churches serve an analogous role for Christians). Indonesian serves as a lingua franca to which all Indonesians are increasingly shifting, but the New York community is highly multilingual with numerous speakers of Javanese, Manado Malay, Sundanese, and a dozen other languages.

Minangkabau

Baso Minangkabau
New York's relatively new Indonesian community is several thousand strong and growing, with the largest concentration in Elmhurst, and the Al-Hikmah mosque in Astoria serving as an important community center for Indonesian Muslims (while churches serve an analogous role for Christians). Indonesian serves as a lingua franca to which all Indonesians are increasingly shifting, but the New York community is highly multilingual with numerous speakers of Javanese, Manado Malay, Sundanese, and a dozen other languages.

Northern Thai

ภาษาถิ่นพายัพ
Thai immigration to New York began in the 1960s, after U.S. armed forces arrived in Thailand during the Vietnam War, with many Thai women marrying American soldiers and joining them when they returned home after service. By the 1980s, Thai immigrants were arriving in America at a rate of roughly 6,500 per year, often driven by employment opportunities in major cities like Los Angeles and New York. While the largest Thai communities are concentrated in Woodside, Elmhurst, and Jackson Heights in Queens, Thai speakers live throughout the metropolitan area, and there are major temples in Queens, the Bronx, Westchester, and Long Island. Many families own restaurants, with one hub known as Thai Town, along Manhattan's Ninth Avenue, from roughly 45th to 55th Street. Thai New Yorkers from the country's north are most likely to speak Northern Thai, which is related but not mutually intelligible with (Central) Thai, while some northeasterners speak the distinct Isan variety.

Nubri

ནུབ་རི་སྐད་
There are over 200 people from Nubri in New York, according to one community member, but the number is increasing. Many are in Woodside and Jackson Heights with other Tibetan/Himalayan communities, and newer arrivals are seeking work as Uber drivers and hotel workers, with some still speaking this Tibetic language variety at home. The Nubri Association represents those from the area.

Palembang

Musi
New York's relatively new Indonesian community is several thousand strong and growing, with the largest concentration in Elmhurst, and the Al-Hikmah mosque in Astoria serving as an important community center for Indonesian Muslims (while churches serve an analogous role for Christians). Indonesian serves as a lingua franca to which all Indonesians are increasingly shifting, but the New York community is highly multilingual with numerous speakers of Javanese, Manado Malay, Sundanese, and a dozen other languages.

Rakhine

ရခိုင်ဘာသာ
New York's Burmese community is growing fast, particularly in areas of western Queens (Elmhurst, Woodhaven, Sunnyside, and Jackson Heights), where at least 7,000 immigrants from Myanmar currently reside, according to 2015-2019 American Community Survey data—and also southern Brooklyn. Many are Christian refugees from minority groups who fled the country's military rule and decades of civil war, as well as a reported small number Rohingya Muslims facing extreme persecution. Other community members cite educational opportunities as their motivation for immigrating. The vast majority of Burmese in Myanmar are Buddhist, and there are many ethnic Burmans and other Myanmar Buddhists who gather at the Buddhist temple in Brooklyn's Prospect Heights, which has a larger facility in New Jersey. Many of the Christian groups gather at Glendale's Myanmar Baptist Church. Some have found work in Manhattan's Diamond District. Besides Burmese (including the Dawei and Intha varieties), there are speakers of several varieties of Chin, Kachin, Karen, Lahu, Mon, Pa'O, Rakhine, Shan, and Wa, and perhaps other languages.

Sampang

किराती-साम्पाङ
A large event held by the Kirat Rai Society of America drew some 300 people in December 2019, with both a large number of Rai and a large number of Nepali New Yorkers from other ethnolinguistic groups. The Kirat Rai Society of America is one organization representing members of several dozen different ethnolinguistic groups of eastern Nepal considered Indigenous to the region, but not Sunwar, Limbu, or Bhutanese Rai, who have their own organizations, or Yakkha, of whom there may be a small number. Almost all groups, after centuries of pressure, are shifting to Nepali, with the largest Rai language Bantawa sometimes also serving as a kind of common language. Estimates of the New York Rai community, centered in Queens, ranged from a few hundred to as many as 1,000. Besides Bantawa, of which there may be dozens of speakers, there are a significant number of Chamling speakers, some Khaling, Nachhiring, and Sampang speakers and reportedly a few speakers of Kulung and Thulung.

Sasak

Sasak
New York's relatively new Indonesian community is several thousand strong and growing, with the largest concentration in Elmhurst, and the Al-Hikmah mosque in Astoria serving as an important community center for Indonesian Muslims (while churches serve an analogous role for Christians). Indonesian serves as a lingua franca to which all Indonesians are increasingly shifting, but the New York community is highly multilingual with numerous speakers of Javanese, Manado Malay, Sundanese, and a dozen other languages.

Shan

လိၵ်ႈတႆး
New York's Burmese community is growing fast, particularly in areas of western Queens (Elmhurst, Woodhaven, Sunnyside, and Jackson Heights), where at least 7,000 immigrants from Myanmar currently reside, according to 2015-2019 American Community Survey data—and also southern Brooklyn. Many are Christian refugees from minority groups who fled the country's military rule and decades of civil war, as well as a reported small number Rohingya Muslims facing extreme persecution. Other community members cite educational opportunities as their motivation for immigrating. The vast majority of Burmese in Myanmar are Buddhist, and there are many ethnic Burmans and other Myanmar Buddhists who gather at the Buddhist temple in Brooklyn's Prospect Heights, which has a larger facility in New Jersey. Many of the Christian groups gather at Glendale's Myanmar Baptist Church. Some have found work in Manhattan's Diamond District. Besides Burmese (including the Dawei and Intha varieties), there are speakers of several varieties of Chin, Kachin, Karen, Lahu, Mon, Pa'O, Rakhine, Shan, and Wa, and perhaps other languages.

Sherpa

ཤར་པའི་སྐད་
The Sherpa community estimates that there may be as many as 11,000 Sherpas in the New York area, mostly from the Solukhumbu area of northern Nepal in the region of Mt. Everest (known as Chomolungma), where so many famous Sherpa mountaineers have worked. Though some are in Brooklyn and elsewhere, most New York Sherpas live within a few miles of the Sherpa Gompa, a Tibetan Buddhist temple founded by the United Sherpa Association in the center of Jackson Heights/Elmhurst. Housed in an old church, the temple has become an important center not only for Sherpas but also for the wider Himalayan community. Down the block is another Sherpa community center where the Sherpa's Tibetic language is taught, and there are also efforts to launch an occasional Sherpa-language radio station and create a community hub upstate in Walkill.

Sindhi

سنڌي, सिन्धी
Sindhi speakers from both India and Pakistan are spread out throughout the city, with significant numbers in Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan, and elsewhere. Muslim Sindhis from Pakistan may worship at Makki Masjid in Midwood, while many Hindu Sindhis have been part of the Satya Narayan Mandir in Elmhurst. Reportedly New York's first Sindhi restaurant, Kailash Parbat opened a few years ago in Manhattan's "Curry Hill", bringing chaat and other traditional Sindhi delicacies to the city.

Sundanese

Basa Sunda
New York's relatively new Indonesian community is several thousand strong and growing, with the largest concentration in Elmhurst, and the Al-Hikmah mosque in Astoria serving as an important community center for Indonesian Muslims (while churches serve an analogous role for Christians). Indonesian serves as a lingua franca to which all Indonesians are increasingly shifting, but the New York community is highly multilingual with numerous speakers of Javanese, Manado Malay, Sundanese, and a dozen other languages.

Sunwar

किराती-कोँइच
Some of the Sunwar speakers who have come to New York alongside other Kiranti groups from eastern Nepal are former Gurkha soldiers who served in the British army. The Sunwar Organization of America brings members of the community together.

Thai

ภาษาไทย
Thai immigration to New York began in the 1960s, after U.S. armed forces arrived in Thailand during the Vietnam War, with many Thai women marrying American soldiers and joining them when they returned home after service. By the 1980s, Thai immigrants were arriving in America at a rate of roughly 6,500 per year, often driven by employment opportunities in major cities like Los Angeles and New York. While the largest Thai communities are concentrated in Woodside, Elmhurst, and Jackson Heights in Queens, Thai speakers live throughout the metropolitan area, and there are major temples in Queens, the Bronx, Westchester, and Long Island. Many families own restaurants, with one hub known as Thai Town, along Manhattan's Ninth Avenue, from roughly 45th to 55th Street. Thai New Yorkers from the country's north are most likely to speak Northern Thai, which is related but not mutually intelligible with (Central) Thai, while some northeasterners speak the distinct Isan variety.

Tibetan

བོད་སྐད་
Most Tibetan New Yorkers have settled in the Queens neighborhoods of Astoria, Sunnyside, Woodside, Jackson Heights, Elmhurst, and Corona among other South Asian and Himalayan communities. The growing community is creating and maintaining a tremendous range of communal, political, cultural, artistic, and other organizations, prominent among them the Tibetan Community of New York & New Jersey (with its Woodside headquarters) and the New York Tibetan Service Center in Elmhurst, which runs a wide variety of programs. (ELA recognizes that the Chinese government's rule in Tibet, where this language is spoken, is disputed.)

Tokpe Gola

གྲོགས་པའི་སྒ་ལའ་སྐད་
The Tibetic language variety Tokpe Gola is spoken in the Taplejung region of eastern Nepal, and was only brought to the U.S. in the past decade as younger generations sought educational opportunities outside of Nepal. Now with a population of over 50 people in the city, the group has formed a Tokpe Gola society (Dhokpya Kyidug Samaj) with cultural programs like the annual Losar (New Year) celerbation and the Lhapsol. Most live in and around Jackson Heights-Elmhurst near other Tibetan/Himalayan communities.

Tontemboan

Tontemboan
Tontemboan is an Austronesian language, of northern Sulawesi, Indonesia, with approximately 100,000 speakers, although it is not being passed on to children and is under pressure from Manado Malay, a Malay creole prevalent in the region. Documentation of Tontemboan assembled by missionaries a century ago is relatively inaccessible to its speakers, as it is written in Dutch. A small number of Tontemboan speakers — such as Alfrits and his wife Rose — have settled in Queens.

Vietnamese

Tiếng Việt
Few Vietnamese speakers lived in New York before 1975, when the fall of Saigon drove large numbers of South Vietnamese to come to the United States as refugees. Some Vietnamese migrants had married U.S. servicemen, but a much larger number, including many Hoa (or ethnic Chinese), came as "boat people" fleeing repression in the following years. A substantial Vietnamese community, speaking Southern varieties, called New York home by the 1990s, with no single center but concentrations in or near Chinese areas of Brooklyn, Queens, and Manhattan (considering degrees of cultural and linguistic kinship) and an apparently more heavily Kinh community in the Bronx with its own Buddhist temple (Chieu Kien) and a Vietnamese-language mass at St. Nicholas of Tolentine. Quite distinct is a smaller grouping of North Vietnamese who have come as educational migrants and professionals in recent years.

Wa

Va
New York's Burmese community is growing fast, particularly in areas of western Queens (Elmhurst, Woodhaven, Sunnyside, and Jackson Heights), where at least 7,000 immigrants from Myanmar currently reside, according to 2015-2019 American Community Survey data—and also southern Brooklyn. Many are Christian refugees from minority groups who fled the country's military rule and decades of civil war, as well as a reported small number Rohingya Muslims facing extreme persecution. Other community members cite educational opportunities as their motivation for immigrating. The vast majority of Burmese in Myanmar are Buddhist, and there are many ethnic Burmans and other Myanmar Buddhists who gather at the Buddhist temple in Brooklyn's Prospect Heights, which has a larger facility in New Jersey. Many of the Christian groups gather at Glendale's Myanmar Baptist Church. Some have found work in Manhattan's Diamond District. Besides Burmese (including the Dawei and Intha varieties), there are speakers of several varieties of Chin, Kachin, Karen, Lahu, Mon, Pa'O, Rakhine, Shan, and Wa, and perhaps other languages.
Additional languages spoken in this neighborhood:
  • Amdo Tibetan
  • Asturian
  • Batak (Karo)
  • Batak (Toba)
  • Bhojpuri
  • Cantonese
  • Chantyal
  • Dzongkha
  • Ecuadorian Spanish
  • Falam Chin
  • Fujianese
  • Hakha Chin
  • Hyolmo
  • Kachin
  • Kham Magar
  • Loke
  • Magar
  • Manang
  • Mexican Spanish
  • Nar-Phu
  • Nepali
  • Newari
  • Pa'O
  • Peruvian Quechua
  • Philippine English
  • Ramaluk
  • Sharchop
  • Tagalog
  • Taiwanese
  • Tamang
  • Tedim Chin
  • Tepehua
  • Tö Tibetan
  • Ü-Tsang Tibetan
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