Neighborhood

Gravesend

Brooklyn
In the Census-defined PUMA including Bensonhurst & Bath Beach, according to recent Census data, (in descending order), Cantonese, Russian, Italian, Mandarin, Polish, and Bengali each have more than 1000 speakers. Varieties of English, Spanish, Russian, Arabic, and Chinese are commonly 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:

Cilentano

Cilendano
Cilentano varieties from the Italian region of Campania, including parts of the province of Salerno, are spoken by a number of different communities in New York, including those with roots in Sacco (with the Associazione Sacchesi D'America in Whitestone), Sanza (with the Society-St Mary of the Snow in Williamsburg), and Caggiano (with the Association Caggianesi D’America in Gravesend).

Egyptian Judeo-Arabic

اللهجة المصرية اليهودية
In addition to the substantial Moroccan Jewish community with several centers around the city, there are Jews from elsewhere in North Africa (Egypt, Libya, Algeria, and Tunisia) living in and around the larger "Syrian" Jewish community of central and southern Brooklyn and speaking at least traces of the distinctive Judeo-Arabic varieties from their earlier North African homes. Ahaba Ve Ahva is a long-time Egyptian congregation by Ocean Parkway, and there are reports of at least scattered individuals with backgrounds from Algeria, Libya, and Tunisia (including the island of Djerba). As an illustration of even more local variation, one woman originally from Benghazi (Libya) reports that the Jewish community there spoke a distinct variety versus those from Tripoli.

Emiliano

Emiliàn
On what came to be known (pejoratively) as the “Lung Block” on the Lower East Side, migrant communities from Piacenza in Emilia-Romagna (and from other areas in Tuscany and the north) lived alongside a diverse mix of southerners, with the local church named St. Joseph’s so as to be acceptable to all communities, according to researcher Stefano Morello. Later, like other New York Italian communities, many moved to outer borough and suburban areas like Bath Beach, where some with roots in and around Piacenza have maintained the Societa' Val Trebbia e Val Nure. Others moved to Copiague on Long Island.

Falam Chin

Laiṭong
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.

Haketia

חכיתיה
Within New York's Moroccan Jewish community — including synagogues in Manhattan, Queens, and Brooklyn but 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 the Judeo-Spanish spoken up until the 1950s in cities of northern Morocco like Tetuan and Tangier. Of the same origin as the better-known Judeo-Spanish (or Ladino) of the Ottoman Empire, Haketia took on more elements of Moroccan (Judeo-)Arabic, among other things. Alicia Raz, taken from Morocco to Israel when she was one day old, grew up speaking a "Hispanicized" Haketia and has worked to bring Haketia speakers in New York (and beyond) together with her Voces de Haketia project.

Judeo-Spanish

Ladino
As they grew more prosperous, many Sephardic families, some moving from the nearby tenements of Brownsville, were able to buy single-family homes in an arc of Brooklyn neighborhoods stretching from New Lots to Bensonhurst. At its height in the period immediately after the Second World War, the community maintained an impressive infrastructure of syngaogues, social clubs, and charitable organizations even as the younger generation shifted to English and looked towards the Long Island suburbs. Renowned singer Victoria Hazan was one of many Ladino speakers to spend their last days at the Sephardic Home for the Aged in Bath Beach.

Karakalpak

Qaraqalpaq
A few speakers of Karakalpak, a minority language of Uzbekistan closely related to Uzbek, may be found in Brooklyn's growing Uzbek community. In 2019, ELA encountered one partial Karakalpak speaker studying at Columbia University.

Kurdish

Kurmancî
The relatively small and scattered community of Kurdish speakers across the New York area comes together every year at Nawruz, held in recent years at the Armenian community's Hovnanian School in New Milford, near where some speakers live. Others are in Brooklyn and Manhattan, and many are students staying temporarily. Unlike Nashville's large, concentrated community from Iraqi Kurdistan, Kurdish speakers in New York may come from across the Kurdish world (including Syria, Turkey, Iran, Iraq). In addition to Kurmaji, small numbers also speak Zaza, Sorani, and possibly other varieties.

Sicilian

Sicilianu
New York City has been a major center for the Sicilian language since the late 19th century, when it was the principal language spoken by many of the millions of Italian immigrants arriving in the United States. Sicilian speakers are present, especially the older generation, in all the major Italian neighborhoods of the city (Ridgewood, Bensonhurst, Bay Ridge, much of Staten Island etc.) as well in the suburbs of Long Island, Westchester, and New Jersey — and the city even boasts a vibrant Sicilian-language poetry scene. Sicilian social clubs with roots in particular towns still abound, from the century-old Società Concordia Partanna in Ridgewood to the Society of the Citizens of Pozzallo in Carroll Gardens, the Castellammare del Golfo Social Club USA in Bensonhurst, and the broader Sicilian Citizens' Club in Bayonne, New Jersey. Read more here.

Syrian Judeo-Arabic

اللهجة السورية اليهودية
The Syrian Jewish community based in Brooklyn, with a secondary hub in Deal, New Jersey, is thought to represent the single largest group of Jews from Syria in the world, estimated as having 40,000 members or more. There are distinct communities, with distinct Brooklyn synagogues, that have roots in Aleppo and Damascus. Migration began to the Lower East Side and later Williamsburg in the early 20th century, with the community now centered along Ocean Parkway in Brooklyn. A last significant wave of Syrian Jews in the 1990s. The community has been characterized both by its cohesiveness and by the large number of synagogues and other institutions built in Brooklyn. Most no longer speak the distinctively Jewish form of the local Arabic of Aleppo or Damascus but have switched to English or Arabic, though significant musical and liturgical traditions are being maintained.
Additional languages spoken in this neighborhood:
  • Azeri
  • Buryat
  • Cantonese
  • Georgian
  • Juhuri
  • K'iche'
  • Turkish
  • Uzbek
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