Neighborhood

Great Kills

Staten Island
In the Census-defined PUMA including the southern part of Staten Island, according to recent Census data, Russian, Italian, and Albanian are recorded as having over 1000 speakers. Varieties of English and Spanish are widely spoken. ELA data shows no significant sites for smaller language communities in this neighborhood.
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Languages with a significant site in this neighborhood, marked by a point on the map:

Arbëresh

Arbërisht
Arriving within the large Southern Italian immigrant wave beginning in the late 19th century, Arbëresh speakers (from places such as Vaccarizzo, San Cosmo Albanese, Frascineto, and Acquaformosa in Calabria and Greci in Campania) came to live within broader Italian neighborhoods, beginning in Little Italy and later in the Bronx, Staten Island, and likely elsewhere. According to community historians, the substantial community of the Inwood-Lawrence-Rockaway area on the South Shore of Long Island was largely from Cerzeto, San Martino di Finita, and surrounding Arbëresh villages. From 1904 to 1946, the Arbëresh priest Papas Ciro Pinnola created a parish within the Archdiocese of New York, unique in North America, dedicated to the distinctive (Greek-language) Byzantine Catholic rite of the Italo-Albanian Church. In recent years, the rite has been revived at Our Lady of Grace church on Staten Island.

Egyptian Arabic

مصرى
Egyptian Arabic speakers, including a substantial number of Coptic Christians fleeing sectarian violence in Egypt, have come to the metro area in recent decades. The "Little Egypt" on Steinway Street in Astoria is home to a range of institutions and now includes many other North African New Yorkers, but there are also Egyptian clusters in Bay Ridge, Ridgewood, Jersey City (home to the Ghabour Brothers market), and in much of Staten Island.

Italian English

Italian English
Italian English is what linguists sometimes call an "ethnolect", a sometimes distinct variety of English spoken by Italian Americans, with influence from (especially Southern) Italian varieties. Many who use it are native speakers either of Italian languages (sometimes called "dialetti") like Sicilian or Italian itself. While the majority of Italian immigrants to the New York area were native speakers of forms of Sicilian, Neapolitan, Calabrese, and Pugliese, there was widespread shift to English and to some extent Italian in the subsequent generations. Today, major areas for Italian English include Bensonhurst, Middle Village, Morris Park, Dyker Heights, and much of Staten Island.

Lenape (Munsee)

Lunaape
Besides the southern bit of what is now New York, traditional Lenape-speaking territory encompasses New Jersey, northern Delaware, and eastern Pennsylvania, where people lived in a constellation of separate, but linguistically and culturally similar, bands — 40 or more of them with a few hundred members each. In New Jersey, there were the Raritans, the Haverstraw, the Tappan, the Hackensack, the Minisinks, and others; in what is now New York City, the Canarsee, the Nayack, the Rockaway, and others. Across the Lenape world, at least three closely related languages were probably spoken: Southern Unami, Northern Unami, and Munsee (the northern variety associated with most of today's metro NYC). Today, after centuries of dispersal and diaspora, the Lenape are in Ontario, with three officially recognized Lenape clusters at Moraviantown, Munsee, and the mixed Six Nations Reserve. They are in Oklahoma — two federally recognized Lenape tribes in the west and the east of the state — and they are at Stockbridge in Wisconsin. There are also a number of groups and individuals across New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and elsewhere who claim Lenape heritage. There are a few native speakers of Munsee remaining in Ontario, and revival efforts — including classes taught by Lenape language keeper Karen Hunter at the Endangered Language Alliance on 18th Street in Manaháhtaan and at Ramapough Lunaape Nation in Mahwah, New Jersey — are ongoing.
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Great Kills

Staten Island

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