NYC's language mosaic
We all know New York City is one of the most diverse places in the world, and this map really encapsulates that. Around half of the city's population speaks a language besides English at home, and half of the time that language is Spanish. People from across Latin America are an extremely large and important community in New York, and if either English or Spanish were included on this map, they would've dominated almost everywhere. But this would mask the massive linguistic diversity in the city, and the nearly 2 million New Yorkers who speak another language besides those two.
So I decided to create a map showcasing all the other languages, and I actually wrote in those languages on the map because it looks absolutely gorgeous that way. The divisions on this map are the census's "community districts", all of which include several different neighborhoods and most of which have roughly 100,000 people.
By far the most spoken language after English and Spanish is Chinese. Now, yes, I'm aware that China has many languages. The language section of the census gives people the options of Mandarin, Fujianese, Sichuanese, Cantonese, Hainanese, or simply "Chinese." The majority of respondents chose "Chinese", so for simplicity's sake I decided to combine them all under that name. If I hadn't, this map would have a lot less red on it.
Chinese New York started out in the 1880s as a few blocks near Five Points inhabited by about 2,000 men who came to NYC fleeing violence in the western US. Thanks to illegal immigration, the enclave survived despite eighty years of racist immigration restriction. After these restrictions were lifted in 1965, the community started expanding due to arrivals from British-ruled Hong Kong. When mainland China lifted its restrictions on people leaving the country in 1983, this turned from a trickle to a flood. Wheras immigrants from northern China mainly went to the West Coast, those from the Fujian and Guangdong provinces concentrated in New York, toiling in garment sweatshops, kitchens, and laundromats so their children could have a shot at the American dream. By now, there are more than 350,000 Chinese immigrants in New York, and another 220,000 Americans of Chinese ancestry--and both figures are still growing. The Chinese have long since spread out from the crowded Manhattan enclave and established new ones in Brooklyn and Queens. While Manhattan Chinatown might still be the most popular tourist destination, it's now only one of seven distinct Chinatowns in NYC.
After Chinese comes Russian. The Soviet Union did everything it could to prevent people from leaving, but in the 1970s, it faced intense international pressure to let its large Jewish population "return" to Israel and eventually agreed to let some Jews emigrate. To everyone's surprise, however, most of them made their way not to Israel, but to America--specifically, Russian Jews went to Brighton Beach and other neighborhoods in South Brooklyn, while Bukharan Jews from Soviet Central Asia settled in Rego Park and Forest Hills in Queens. Since the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the aging Russian-Jewish population has been joined by younger, mainly non-Jewish immigrants from across the former USSR.
The fastest-growing new community is the Bangladeshis, who numbered just 5,000 as of 1990 but have since grown to nearly 100,000. There are seven major Bengali enclaves in NYC, five that are visible on the map and two that are not (Kensington in Brooklyn and Astoria in Queens). Many Ghanians have settled in the Bronx, which is reflected on the map by the widespread presence of Akan, a language (or some would say group of languages) that is/are widely spoken in the West African nation.
Central Brooklyn, particularly the area around Flatbush Avenue, is home to the heaviest concentration of Haitians in the US with the exception of Miami's Little Haiti neighborhood. They live alongside immigrants from all across the West Indies, the majority of whom speak English and are therefore invisible on this map. Make no mistake, though: West Indians are a massive presence in NYC, making up four of the ten largest immigrant groups (Jamaicans, Haitians, Guyanese, and Trinidadians) and numbering more than 600,000 in tota;. All the areas on the map where Haitian Creole is spoken have similarly large presences of Anglophone immigrants rom the Caribbean. The north Bronx can accurately be described as a little Jamaica, and so can, ironically enough, parts of Jamaica, Queens. The areas on the map where Punjabi is spoken (Richmond Hill and Ozone Park) also have many Guyanese and Trinidadians of South Asian descent.
If I had made this made a century ago, it likely would have been dominated by two languages: Italian and Yiddish. Italian immigration has long since slowed to a trickle, and today the only remaining neighborhoods where it can be seen on the map are the suburban areas of the East Bronx and southern Staten Island. These are both mainly populated by Italian-descended Americans, with a good numbers of Italians who immigrated during the '60s and '70s and are now living out their retirements in the suburbs. Many old Italian neighborhoods are now seeing an influx of Albanians, paralleling the Albanian immigration into Italy itself.
Yiddish is widely considered to be a dead language, as most of its speakers either were killed during the Holocaust or immigrated to the US or Israel, where their children assimilated and grew up speaking English and Hebrew respectively. However, there was one group that bucked this trend: Hasidic Jews. When the Hasidim immigrated to NYC following the Holocaust, they avoided assimilation at all costs, and this included holding on to their language. Several generations later, Yiddish remains the main language of everyday life in the insular communities Boro Park and South Williamsburg. Hasidic children learn Yiddish before they learn English, which is why they have foreign-sounding accents despite being born in the US. As a result, the Yiddish language is alive and well in the heart of Brooklyn, and in fact, due to the high birthrate of the Hasidim, the number of Yiddish speakers is increasing for the first time in decades.
Again, even though I've excluded English and Spanish, lots of large groups are invisible on the map because so many people are grouped together in the community districts. Some of the most notable absences are Arabs in Bay Ridge and Van Nest (which has become Little Yemen), Koreans in northeast Queens, Poles in Greenpoint, Pakistanis in Midwood, Bangladeshis in Kensington and Astoria, Nepalis and Filipinos in central Queens, Uzbeks in south Brooklyn, and many others. These are all massive communities that aren't shown because they live in close proximity to even larger ones.
There's also the opposite issue. Some areas have relatively few immigrants (at least by NYC standards), and in others the overwhelming majority of them speak Spanish. In areas like this, the third-biggest linguistic group might be just 2-3% of the population. This is how you might get misled into thinking NYC has a massive Francophone population. Most areas where French takes third place are either few immigrants (central Manhattan) or where the vast majority of immigrants are Latino (the South Bronx). The former has a sizeable population of wealthy French immigrants (or "expats" as they'd probably call themselves), and the latter has quite a few Francophones from West Africa, but there are still no French-speaking countries in the top 20 sources of New York's immigrants.
I made this map around a year ago using a tool from the Census Bureau that allowed you to see how many people spoke a given language in a given area. Unfortunately, that tool required Flash Player, which is now defunct, so I guess you'll have to take my word for it. I promise you it doesn't serve any sort of nefarious agenda of mine to have people believe Bangla is the third-most-spoken language in Community District 12.
If you wanna see something more detailed, check out Jill Hubley's amazing map.
If you're curious about what this map would look like with English and Spanish included, here ya go:
Or just Spanish:
So I decided to create a map showcasing all the other languages, and I actually wrote in those languages on the map because it looks absolutely gorgeous that way. The divisions on this map are the census's "community districts", all of which include several different neighborhoods and most of which have roughly 100,000 people.
By far the most spoken language after English and Spanish is Chinese. Now, yes, I'm aware that China has many languages. The language section of the census gives people the options of Mandarin, Fujianese, Sichuanese, Cantonese, Hainanese, or simply "Chinese." The majority of respondents chose "Chinese", so for simplicity's sake I decided to combine them all under that name. If I hadn't, this map would have a lot less red on it.
Chinese New York started out in the 1880s as a few blocks near Five Points inhabited by about 2,000 men who came to NYC fleeing violence in the western US. Thanks to illegal immigration, the enclave survived despite eighty years of racist immigration restriction. After these restrictions were lifted in 1965, the community started expanding due to arrivals from British-ruled Hong Kong. When mainland China lifted its restrictions on people leaving the country in 1983, this turned from a trickle to a flood. Wheras immigrants from northern China mainly went to the West Coast, those from the Fujian and Guangdong provinces concentrated in New York, toiling in garment sweatshops, kitchens, and laundromats so their children could have a shot at the American dream. By now, there are more than 350,000 Chinese immigrants in New York, and another 220,000 Americans of Chinese ancestry--and both figures are still growing. The Chinese have long since spread out from the crowded Manhattan enclave and established new ones in Brooklyn and Queens. While Manhattan Chinatown might still be the most popular tourist destination, it's now only one of seven distinct Chinatowns in NYC.
After Chinese comes Russian. The Soviet Union did everything it could to prevent people from leaving, but in the 1970s, it faced intense international pressure to let its large Jewish population "return" to Israel and eventually agreed to let some Jews emigrate. To everyone's surprise, however, most of them made their way not to Israel, but to America--specifically, Russian Jews went to Brighton Beach and other neighborhoods in South Brooklyn, while Bukharan Jews from Soviet Central Asia settled in Rego Park and Forest Hills in Queens. Since the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the aging Russian-Jewish population has been joined by younger, mainly non-Jewish immigrants from across the former USSR.
The fastest-growing new community is the Bangladeshis, who numbered just 5,000 as of 1990 but have since grown to nearly 100,000. There are seven major Bengali enclaves in NYC, five that are visible on the map and two that are not (Kensington in Brooklyn and Astoria in Queens). Many Ghanians have settled in the Bronx, which is reflected on the map by the widespread presence of Akan, a language (or some would say group of languages) that is/are widely spoken in the West African nation.
Central Brooklyn, particularly the area around Flatbush Avenue, is home to the heaviest concentration of Haitians in the US with the exception of Miami's Little Haiti neighborhood. They live alongside immigrants from all across the West Indies, the majority of whom speak English and are therefore invisible on this map. Make no mistake, though: West Indians are a massive presence in NYC, making up four of the ten largest immigrant groups (Jamaicans, Haitians, Guyanese, and Trinidadians) and numbering more than 600,000 in tota;. All the areas on the map where Haitian Creole is spoken have similarly large presences of Anglophone immigrants rom the Caribbean. The north Bronx can accurately be described as a little Jamaica, and so can, ironically enough, parts of Jamaica, Queens. The areas on the map where Punjabi is spoken (Richmond Hill and Ozone Park) also have many Guyanese and Trinidadians of South Asian descent.
If I had made this made a century ago, it likely would have been dominated by two languages: Italian and Yiddish. Italian immigration has long since slowed to a trickle, and today the only remaining neighborhoods where it can be seen on the map are the suburban areas of the East Bronx and southern Staten Island. These are both mainly populated by Italian-descended Americans, with a good numbers of Italians who immigrated during the '60s and '70s and are now living out their retirements in the suburbs. Many old Italian neighborhoods are now seeing an influx of Albanians, paralleling the Albanian immigration into Italy itself.
Yiddish is widely considered to be a dead language, as most of its speakers either were killed during the Holocaust or immigrated to the US or Israel, where their children assimilated and grew up speaking English and Hebrew respectively. However, there was one group that bucked this trend: Hasidic Jews. When the Hasidim immigrated to NYC following the Holocaust, they avoided assimilation at all costs, and this included holding on to their language. Several generations later, Yiddish remains the main language of everyday life in the insular communities Boro Park and South Williamsburg. Hasidic children learn Yiddish before they learn English, which is why they have foreign-sounding accents despite being born in the US. As a result, the Yiddish language is alive and well in the heart of Brooklyn, and in fact, due to the high birthrate of the Hasidim, the number of Yiddish speakers is increasing for the first time in decades.
Again, even though I've excluded English and Spanish, lots of large groups are invisible on the map because so many people are grouped together in the community districts. Some of the most notable absences are Arabs in Bay Ridge and Van Nest (which has become Little Yemen), Koreans in northeast Queens, Poles in Greenpoint, Pakistanis in Midwood, Bangladeshis in Kensington and Astoria, Nepalis and Filipinos in central Queens, Uzbeks in south Brooklyn, and many others. These are all massive communities that aren't shown because they live in close proximity to even larger ones.
There's also the opposite issue. Some areas have relatively few immigrants (at least by NYC standards), and in others the overwhelming majority of them speak Spanish. In areas like this, the third-biggest linguistic group might be just 2-3% of the population. This is how you might get misled into thinking NYC has a massive Francophone population. Most areas where French takes third place are either few immigrants (central Manhattan) or where the vast majority of immigrants are Latino (the South Bronx). The former has a sizeable population of wealthy French immigrants (or "expats" as they'd probably call themselves), and the latter has quite a few Francophones from West Africa, but there are still no French-speaking countries in the top 20 sources of New York's immigrants.
I made this map around a year ago using a tool from the Census Bureau that allowed you to see how many people spoke a given language in a given area. Unfortunately, that tool required Flash Player, which is now defunct, so I guess you'll have to take my word for it. I promise you it doesn't serve any sort of nefarious agenda of mine to have people believe Bangla is the third-most-spoken language in Community District 12.
If you wanna see something more detailed, check out Jill Hubley's amazing map.
If you're curious about what this map would look like with English and Spanish included, here ya go:
Or just Spanish:
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