Neighborhood

Greenpoint

Brooklyn
In the Census-defined PUMA including Greenpoint & Williamsburg, according to recent Census data, (in descending order) Yiddish (with over 25,000), Polish, Hebrew, French, Cantonese, and Russian each have more than 1000 speakers. English and Spanish 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:

Basque

Euskara
Since 1973, Euzko-Etxea, the Basque Club of New York, has maintained its headquarters in Greenpoint, though most Basque speakers lie elsewhere, especially Newark, where the restaurant Casa Vasca is also a community hub. With over 100 members, Euzko-Etxea hosts large annual events aimed at maintaining the Basque community and its culture and sharing it with the wider community through dancing, food, and language at the converted church on Eckford Street.

Polish

Polski
Like most European immigrants, Poles began arriving in large numbers at Ellis Island in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Large waves followed after the Second World War and again in the 1980s and 90s with the collpase of the Eastern Bloc. In recent decades, the city's best-known Polish community has been in Greenpoint, where Polish delis, bakeries, and butcher shops stretch along Manhattan Avenue, often bearing signs with no English translation, with churches, schools, and other community institutions to match. More recently, with gentrification and generational shift, much of the community has moved to the nearby neighborhoods of Maspeth and Ridgewood. Other Polish communities continue to thrive elsewhere in Brooklyn (Windsor Terrace, Borough Park) as well as in Manhattan (in the East Village, near other Slavic groups), as well as in many areas in New Jersey and Long Island.

Silesian

Ślōnskŏ Gŏdka
Silesian — a Slavic language variety with a long history of contact with forms of German — is mostly spoken in Upper Silesia in southwest Poland, and appears to be winning a new generation of users proud of their distinctive regional identity and its particular history. There appear to be at least a few Silesian speakers, if not more, within the city's large Polish community still to some extent centered in Greenpoint.

Slovak

Slovenčina
Arriving in significant numbers in the mid-19th century, Slovaks first settled in the East Village around 14th Street and 2nd Avenue, gradually moving with other Central and Eastern European groups up towards Yorkville, where Slovak-language church services are still held today at the Church of St. John Nepomucene. A host of Slovak-language newspapers and community organization, including the still-active Slovak American Cultural Center, flourished in New York, thanks in part to a new wave of Slovak refugees who came after the Second World War. New Slovak communities formed in the Williamsburg/Greenpoint area, in western Queens, and in Yonkers (where the Catholic Slovak Club is located).
Additional languages spoken in this neighborhood:
  • Lithuanian
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