Neighborhood

Forest Hills

Queens
In the Census-defined PUMA including Forest Hills & Rego Park, according to recent Census data, (in descending order) Russian, Hindi, Mandarin, Polish, Cantonese, Hebrew, and Japanese each hold more than 1000 speakers. English, Spanish, Tagalog, and Korean 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:

Bukhori

בוכארי
Bukharian Queens, above all in the neighborhoods of Forest Hills and Rego Park but increasingly stretching across eastern Queens and into Nassau County, is a global center for the community, possibly with an estimated 40-50,000 people. The Bukharian Jewish Community Center off Queens Boulevard is an important hub, and organizations like the Bukharian Museum, The Association of Bukharian Jewish Youth "Achdut", and Club "Roshnoyi–Light", among others, are actively involved in cultural preservation efforts that include the language. There are also New York has working Bukhori-language poets and prose writers, as well as shashmaqom and other musicians, actors, and even comedians who create in the language. Queens College recently launched the first course on Bukharian History and Culture ever taught at an American university. Read more here.

Georgian

ქართული
Over the last few decades, New York has become home to one of the hemisphere's most significant Georgian communities, with a growing number of restaurants and other institutions. 4,032 Georgian-born New Yorkers are listed as speaking "Other Not Elsewhere Classified" languages in the 2015-2019 American Community Survey data, which likely refers to Georgian. Assuming that most Georgian-born New Yorkers speak the language — though some may be Russian-dominant — then the number is over 6,000, largely concentrated in Brooklyn (home to the Pesvebi Georgian Cultural Center), with some in New Jersey (home to St Grigol Of Khandzta Georgian Orthodox Church) as well. Some Georgian New Yorkers are native speakers of Mingrelian, Svan, and possibly other varieties. A smaller community of Georgian Jews lives in eastern Queens and worships at the Congregation of Georgian Jews synagogue.

Judeo-Georgian

ყივრული ენა
Though there may be few who remember it today, a distinctively Jewish form of Georgian was reportedly spoken by the country's ancient Jewish community, likely including members of the Georgian Jewish community centered in eastern Queens.

Judeo-Spanish

Ladino
The Sephardic Jewish Center's move to 108th Street in Forest Hills in the early 1950s marked the emergence of eastern Queens as an important area of settlement for Ladino-speaking families. Though the number who speak has diminished today, the synagogue has welcome Jews from Iranian, Egyptian, Iraqi, and other Middle Eastern backgrounds and has served as the site for an annual celebration of Ladino where speakers, semi-speakers, learners, and others come together.

Moroccan Judeo-Arabic

إلعربية ديالنا
Depending on where they lived, Moroccan Jews tended to be speakers either of Ladino (in places like Tetouan or Tangier) or Moroccan Judeo-Arabic (in places like Fez or Marrakesh), with some also speaking Amazigh (Berber) languages and many, especially in most recent times, also speaking Moroccan Arabic and the widespread colonial language, French. Within New York's Moroccan Jewish community — which includes synagogues in Manhattan, Queens, and Brooklyn but is relatively small compared to other Jewish communities and to the Moroccan Jewish communities in Israel, France, Spain, and Latin America — there are a few who remember what was sometimes called il-‘arbiyya dyalna (our Arabic) in contrast to il- ‘arbiyya dil-msilmin (the Arabic of the Muslims) spoken by other Moroccans.

Tajik

Тоҷики
A growing Tajik-speaking community lives primarily in areas around Bay Parkway, Sheepshead Bay, and Brighton Beach including not just Tajik speakers from Tajikistan but also Pamiris for whom Tajik is a second language and those from the Tajik-speaking areas of Bukhara and Samarkand in Uzbekistan. Some, including many Pamiris (native speakers of Shughni) live near the Ismaili Jamatkhana in Queens, where Bukhori (a Jewish variety of Tajik) is also a prominent neighborhood language.

Uzbek

Oʻzbekcha
North America's largest Uzbek community — and one of the largest outside the former Soviet Union — runs roughly along Coney Island Avenue from near Ditmas Avenue, where a community from Samarkand has reportedly taken root, as far down as Brighton Beach, with many from Tashkent living near Avenues X, Y, Z. Brooklyn is home to the Uzbek American Community Center. A smaller community lives in Queens, and a significant number of Bukharian Jews, though more likely to speak Russian and Bukhori, also have knowledge of Uzbek. The Turkistanian American Association draws in New Jersey Uzbeks. According to writer Zohra Saed, an earlier wave of Cold War-era migrants, including Afghan Uzbeks, settled in southern Brooklyn and later in New Jersey and Long Island suburbs. According to 2015-2019 American Community Survey data, there are some 4,935 Uzbekistan-born speakers of "Other Asian Languages" in Kings County. (For privacy reasons, there must be a minimum of 10,000 speakers across the U.S. for a language to appear in the public data.) The American Community Survey also found 19,021 Uzbekistan-born speakers of Russian — some may be ethnic Russians who do not speak Uzbek and some may be ethnic Uzbeks dominant in Russian, but a large number also likely speak Uzbek.
Additional languages spoken in this neighborhood:
  • Jewish English
  • Persian
  • Russian
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Forest Hills

Queens

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