Language

日本語

Japanese
  • Global speakers: 128,350,830
  • Glottocode: nucl1643
  • ISO 639-3: jpn
Eastern AsiaJapan flagJapan
Census
One of the earliest Japanese communities in the city, between the 1910s and 1930s, was centered on the Ichiriki and Taiyo boarding houses on West 65th Street on the northeast side of San Juan Hill, an area populated by large Jewish, Italian, Irish, and Puerto Rican groups that was forever altered by the construction of Lincoln Center in the 1950s. Today, Japanese speakers live throughout the city, with notable concentrations in the East Village and in Astoria, and enough of a concentration of parents in Brooklyn to lead to the creation of a dual-language Japanese-English school in East Williamsburg. The suburban Japanese community in Fort Lee grew in the 1970s due to an increasing number of Japanese enterprises in New Jersey. While some families moved back to Japan after their temporary stay, others remained, creating what has been described as a "little Tokyo". According to 2015-2019 American Community Survey data, there are roughly 4,836 Japanese speakers in Bergen County (including the boroughs of Fort Lee, Cliffside Park, and Palisades Park).
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Sites

NYC neighborhoods or towns in the metro region where the language community has a significant site, marked by a point on the map:

Queens

Astoria
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Manhattan

East Village
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Brooklyn

East Williamsburg
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Bergen

Fort Lee (NJ)
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Manhattan

Lincoln Square
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An urban language map

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All data, unless otherwise specified, is from the Endangered Language Alliance (ELA), based on information from communities, speakers, and other sources.

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