Neighborhood

Jamaica

Queens
In the Census-defined PUMA including Jamaica, Hollis, & St. Albans, according to recent Census data, (in descending order) Bengali, Haitian Creole, French, and "Niger-Congo Languages" each hold 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:

Baoulé

Baoulé
According to one of its leaders, a community of speakers of multiple varieties of Bété, a language of Ivory Coast, has formed in recent years, with some individuals living in East New York and gathering at a Baptist church in Harlem, joined as well by speakers of other Ivorian languages including Baoulé, Ebrié, and Guro.

Bengali

বাংলা
Nowhere in New York (or indeed in the US) is as quintessentially Bangladeshi as Queens, which is home to a tremendous variety of Bengali-speaking communities and institutions everywhere from Astoria (an earlier area of settlement) to Jamaica, Ozone Park, and beyond, with Jackson Heights one particularly visible hub in between.

Bishnupriya Manipuri

বিষ্ণুপ্রিয়া মণিপুরী
Bishnupriya Manipuri is a language spoken by over 100,000 people in the Indian states of Assam and Tripura and the neighboring Bangladeshi state of Sylhet and is related to such major regional languages as Bengali and Assamese. A small community of Bishnupriya Manipuri people lives within the larger Indian and Bangladeshi immigrant community of New York, particularly in Jackson Heights. The Endangered Language Alliance has made recordings of the Bishnupriya language and worked with Uttam Singha, a language activist and founding member of Pouri International, a Bishnupriya organization in Jamaica, Queens. Singha has presented in conjunction with ELA on his work developing Bishnupriya online and offline–through a dictionary, a web portal, a blog, and other projects. Read more here.

Central American Spanish

Español Centroamericano
New York City is home to a tremendous diversity of Spanish varieties, largely mutually intelligible but highly distinctive along regional, ethnic, and local lines — for this map, as among speakers themselves, national distinctions (e.g. Peruvian Spanish, Colombian Spanish) are used even though these do not completely capture the nature of the diversity. Many early Spanish-speaking New Yorkers were Galicians or Castilians living in Manhattan's Little Spain in today's Chelsea or Brooklyn Heights, connected to the port or cigar-making; others were Latin Americans, especially Cubans and Puerto Ricans, who arrived as political refugees or cigar makers in the late 19th century or else after the Spanish-American War of 1898 made those U.S. territories. The largest waves comprised Puerto Rican Spanish speakers following the Second World War and Dominican Spanish speakers starting in the 1960s and 70s, making Caribbean Spanish varieties dominant in the city. Other major communities include the Mexican, Ecuadorian, Colombian, Central American, and Peruvian Spanish speakers who have settled in various zones throughout the metropolitan area, though there are also individuals and communities from virtually every Spanish-speaking community in the world. Spanish and English also mix in the city in distinctive ways, producing in some contexts a code-switching "Spanglish" associated particularly with long-resident Puerto Rican New Yorkers, also known as Nuyoricans.

Edo

Ẹ̀dó
New York's Nigerian population started growing in the 1970s and 80s, accelerating since 2000 in part thanks to the Diversity Visa program. Nigerians from a wide variety of backgrounds—though a significant percentage are middle-class and highly educated— now make up a large percentage of the city's massive West African community, particularly in East New York, Bedford-Stuyvesant, Flatbush, Clifton, and Concourse. Numerous evangelical churches now serve Christian Nigerian New Yorkers, and there are a number of restaurants, markets, and other businesses for the wider community. Community and hometown organizations also represent those with ties to particular Nigerian states like Edo and Akwa Ibom. The multilingualism of Nigerian New Yorkers testifies to the country's extraordinary linguistic diversity, though Yoruba, Igbo, Hausa, and Edo varieties appear to be the most common, with Nigerian English sometimes a lingua franca. Smaller language groups are also present, including some with substantial and well-organized communities: Afenmai, Anaang, Edo, Efik, Esan, Ibibio, Kalabari, Tiv, Urhobo, and likely others.

Ewe

Èʋegbe
New York is home to a large and growing Ghanaian community centered on "Little Accra" in the Bronx stretching from the Grand Concourse up to Tracey Towers, with Ghanaian English and Twi serving as widely-known lingua francas. Ashanti, Akuapem (Twi), and Fante are all considered mutually intelligible varieties of Akan. Ghanaian New Yorkers from Accra, or who spent significant time in Accra, may be Ga speakers, and in the Bronx community there are also speakers of smaller languages such as Dagaare and Dagbani. The first wave of Ghanaians came to the city after the coup in 1966, with some working with the Black Star Line (Ghana Shipping Company) as seamen, and a large number arriving starting in the 1980s. There are now smaller communities in Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, New Jersey, and Westchester. Those from northern Ghana may be part of the Yankasa Association, based in the Bronx. Records indicate that many of the enslaved Africans brought to New York in the 17th and 18th centuries may have been speakers of Akan varieties.

Fon

Fongbe
An artist from Benin living in Crown Heights speaks Gun-Gbe, Gen-Gbe, and Fon, all major languages of Benin which may have numerous speakers in the city.

K'iche'

K'iche'
K’iche’ is Guatemala’s largest Indigenous language, with over a million speakers concentrated in the country’s central highlands. Like the Mam and other Mayan peoples, the K’iche’ suffered greatly during the genocidal campaigns of the Guatemalan state in the late 20th century and continue to face deeply ingrained discrimination which is driving many north across the border. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the K’iche’ are the largest Mayan ethnic group in New York City, dispersed throughout the city but with clusters in Bensonhurst/Bath Beach/Gravesend (where there are concentrations connected to certain blocks, churches, and businesses), as well as parts of Queens and New Jersey.

Kalabari

Kalabari
New York's Nigerian population started growing in the 1970s and 80s, accelerating since 2000 in part thanks to the Diversity Visa program. Nigerians from a wide variety of backgrounds—though a significant percentage are middle-class and highly educated— now make up a large percentage of the city's massive West African community, particularly in East New York, Bedford-Stuyvesant, Flatbush, Clifton, and Concourse. Numerous evangelical churches now serve Christian Nigerian New Yorkers, and there are a number of restaurants, markets, and other businesses for the wider community. Community and hometown organizations also represent those with ties to particular Nigerian states like Edo and Akwa Ibom. The multilingualism of Nigerian New Yorkers testifies to the country's extraordinary linguistic diversity, though Yoruba, Igbo, Hausa, and Edo varieties appear to be the most common, with Nigerian English sometimes a lingua franca. Smaller language groups are also present, including some with substantial and well-organized communities: Afenmai, Anaang, Edo, Efik, Esan, Ibibio, Kalabari, Tiv, Urhobo, and likely others.

Ladakhi

ལ་དྭགས་སྐད་
Approximately 300 speakers of Balti, Ladakhi, and Purgi — related languages from the neighboring Himalayan borderlands containing Pakistan's Gilgit-Baltistan Province and the disputed Jammu-Kashmir and Ladakh areas under Indian control — have settled around the New York area, including the suburbs, with one of the longest-standing members of the community living in the east 90s in Manhattan. All speak Tibetic languages; Balti speakers are Shia Muslims who may use the Perso-Arabic script to write their language. Baltis who came to New York via Islamabad or Karachi may now be primarily Urdu speakers.

Mam

Mam
Indigenous Maya Mam speakers from the Guatemalan departments of Huehuetenango and Quetzaltenango live across New York City and New Jersey in significant numbers, with a large, relatively new community from the town of Cabricán, for instance, that has members in East Harlem, the Bronx, Staten Island, and Queens. Many in Morristown, New Jersey are from Cajolá, with others reported to be from San Juan Ostuncalco — many different varieties of Mam, not always fully mutually intelligible, are spoken.

Mende

Mɛnde yia
The Mande language family comprises dozens of related languages spoken by tens of millions of people across West Africa. The most widely spoken Mande languages in New York belong to a subgroup called Manding, originally connected to the Mali empire which lasted until the 17th century and today forming a language and dialect continuum from Senegal to Burkina Faso. Among the most widely spoken Manding languages both in West Africa and New York are Bambara (Mali), Dyula (Ivory Coast and Burkina Faso), Maninka (Guinea), and Mandinka (Gambia), which are substantially mutually intelligible. In fact, those who use the N'ko alphabet may refer to these varieties collectively as N'ko (which roughly translates to "I say" in all these varieties). New York today is home to over 12,000 "Mande" speakers according to (the likely very low figure in the) 2015-2019 American Community Survey data, with speakers often living near each other in parts of Harlem and the central Bronx.

Munda

মুন্ডা‎
Munda usually refers to a small but significant family of languages primarily spoken in Eastern India and Bangladesh. Mundari and Santali, two of the largest, are thought to have at least a few speakers in New York within the community of Bengali speakers from Rajshahi in Bangladesh, some of whom live in Jamaica and have formed the Rajshahi Zilla Association, but more evidence is needed.

Persian

فارسی
A wide range of New Yorkers across the metropolitan area speak some form of Persian, including Bukhori (Uzbekistan), Dari (Afghanistan), Tajik (Tajikistan), and Hazara (Afghanistan). The largest centralized Iranian community in the region may be the Iranian Jewish community in Brooklyn and Great Neck which formed after the 1979 Revolution, where there are several other Jewish languages spoken but standard Persian (based on the Teheran variety) is a lingua franca. Although Iranian Muslims, many of them middle-class professionals who came after 1979, are not concentrated in any particular neighborhood, there are hubs in eastern Queens (where the Imam Al-Khoei is a religious center for some), Manhattan, and elsewhere.

Portuguese

Português
A small group of Sephardic Jews, originally from Portugal but expelled from Recife in Brazil, may have included the city's first Portuguese speakers when they arrived in 1654. Just north, many Portuguese settled in SoHo after the Second World War, near 6th Avenue south of Houston. Around the same period, Newark became and today remains a major hub for Portuguese speakers up and down the Eastern seaboard. There are also communities of speakers from different parts of Portugal scattered around New York City, including in the Carroll Gardens area of Brooklyn (with the Luso-American Social Club) and in Jamaica. Queens, which is home to the Portuguese Recreation Club as well as a language school (Escola D. Nuno Álvares Pereira) and a restaurant (O Lavrador). The community in Jamaica was larger from the 1970s to the 1990s, with a significant representation of people from the region of Trás-os-Montes and Mirandela, speaking those dialects. In all areas, recent decades have seen immigrants from other parts of the Lusophone world, especially Brazil, join those originally from Portugal.

Purgi

པུ་རིག་སྐད་
Approximately 300 speakers of Balti, Ladakhi, and Purgi — related languages from the neighboring Himalayan borderlands containing Pakistan's Gilgit-Baltistan Province and the disputed Jammu-Kashmir and Ladakh areas under Indian control — have settled around the New York area, including the suburbs, with one of the longest-standing members of the community living in the east 90s in Manhattan. All speak Tibetic languages; Balti speakers are Shia Muslims who may use the Perso-Arabic script to write their language. Baltis who came to New York via Islamabad or Karachi may now be primarily Urdu speakers.

Santali

ᱥᱟᱱᱛᱟᱲᱤ
Munda usually refers to a small but significant family of languages primarily spoken in Eastern India and Bangladesh. Mundari and Santali, two of the largest, are thought to have at least a few speakers in New York within the community of Bengali speakers from Rajshahi in Bangladesh, some of whom live in Jamaica and have formed the Rajshahi Zilla Association, but more evidence is needed.

Tagalog

Tagalog
Some of the earliest Filipino communities in the city formed around port areas and military installations, such as the Brooklyn Navy Yard and later Governors Island. Today, a section of Roosevelt Avenue in Woodside is the major center for Tagalog speakers, and speakers of other languages of the Philippines, both for New York City and for the entire U.S. east of the Mississippi. There are other concentrations in every borough — often formed near hospitals where Filipina women have been employed in healthcare work — and individual speakers throughout the city. Among the largest of the other communities are Cebuano and Ilocano speakers, and a distinctive Philippine English is also spoken by many. According to 2015-2019 American Community Survey data, 7,987 Tagalog speakers also live in Jersey City, a major community.

Temne

KʌThemnɛ
Temne, one of Sierra Leone's most widely spoken languages, is one of the principal languages spoken by Sierra Leonean New Yorkers, including many who fled the country during its recent civil war. Sierra Leoneans now live throughout the metropolitan area, with concentrations in Staten Island, the Bronx, and Queens.

Urdu

اردو
Joining earlier South Asian Muslim communities in the city, Urdu speakers from Pakistan and India began arriving in New York in large numbers in the 1960s, with the community doubling in size in the 1990s alone. Though there are significant clusters of Urdu speakers today in every borough, the largest and most visible community is Brooklyn's Little Pakistan in Kensington and Midwood, roughly centered along Coney Island Avenue from Avenue H to Foster Avenue. As the national language, Urdu is a lingua franca, but many are speakers of Pashto, Punjabi, Balochi, Sindhi, Saraiki, and Pothwari as well as smaller languages including Wakhi, Burushashki, Balti. After 9/11, the community faced significant pressure from the Immigration and Naturalization Service, with many deported and others leaving voluntarily. Many have also moved south towards Bensonhurst, Bath Beach, and Coney Island. Other significant Pakistani communities, including many mosques and community organizations, can be found in Astoria, Jackson Heights, Jamaica, Concord, and Parkchester.
Additional languages spoken in this neighborhood:
  • African-American English
  • Barbadian Creole
  • Guyanese Creole
  • Igbo
  • Ndyuka
  • Pakistani English
  • Sarnami
  • Sranan Tongo
  • Surinamese Dutch
  • Sylheti
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