Neighborhood

Morningside Heights

Manhattan
In the Census-defined PUMA including Hamilton Heights, Manhattanville & West Harlem, according to recent Census data, (in descending order) French, Mandarin, and "Niger-Congo languages" each have at least 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:

Dakota

Dakhód'iapi
Ella Cara Deloria came to New York to study at Teachers College, but ended up meeting and forging an intellectual partnership with anthropologist Franz Boas, who made Columbia-Barnard a key center for anthropology and linguistics in the early 20th century. Born on the Yankton Sioux Reservation and raised on Pine Ridge in South Dakota, Deloria was a native speaker of several Dakota language varieties, which she then documented through fieldwork in her landmark 1932 Dakota Texts and 1941 Dakota Grammar (co-authored with Boas).

Kadazan Dusun

Kadazan Dusun
In 1954, Joe Munang was reported (by legendary newspaperman Meyer Berger) as being one of seven Dusuns from North Borneo living in the New York area, having come to the city after working on American ships in the Pacific during the Second World War. While he lived in Forest Hills, Joe ran a barbershop a few blocks from Columbia University, where he befriended, assisted, and taught a series of researchers before retiring to Sabah. Of the other Dusun New Yorkers at the time, Berger reported that one worked in a Brooklyn TV factory, another in a Manhattan cafeteria, three others upstate, and the last as a seaman who stayed in the city between trips.

Tigrinya

ትግርኛ
Although Eritrean New Yorkers live throughout the city, including areas of the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Queens, the Eritrean Community Center and Social Club in a Columbia University-owned building on 125th and Broadway in Manhattan was a major focal point for speakers of Tigrinya and Tigre. The center closed in 2012 after 27 years in operation, following eviction. For Eritrean Baptists, one recent gathering place has been a small room in a multi-use building on the Upper West Side, where Tigrinya-language services are held.
Additional languages spoken in this neighborhood:
  • African-American English
  • Mandarin
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Morningside Heights

Manhattan

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