The Languages of NYC

December 9, 2019 6:53 AM

New York City is one of the most linguistically diverse places in the world. The Endangered Language Alliance has just published a map of 637 of them, just in time for the end of the UN's International Year of Indigenous Languages.

The map is click-and-zoom-in-able; see text on the map for various legends, etc. Also, a New York Times article from 2010 about the start of the project.

posted by damayanti (13 comments total)

(In the interest of full disclosure, I have met the project co-director in a professional capacity a couple of times--linguistics is a small field.)
posted by damayanti at 6:55 AM on December 9, 2019

That map says there's someone who speaks Taino in Inwood. AFAIK, Taino is not a living language. Am I misunderstanding how the map works?
posted by LizardBreath at 7:24 AM on December 9, 2019

The map includes historical (marked with a *) and revitalizing (marked with **) languages; the legend's in the top right. There are revitalization efforts for Taino, which apparently include at least one person in Inwood!
posted by damayanti at 7:58 AM on December 9, 2019 [1 favorite]

This is beautiful! I wonder if the up-coming interactive map will have information about the communities, like who's teaching classes, how to connect native speakers or connect heritage speakers or hopefuls to them, or those working to preserve or revive languages, and what other resources there are for interacting with those languages and cultures.
posted by carrioncomfort at 8:40 AM on December 9, 2019

Foo, that map doesn't really seem to work in Safari.
posted by tavella at 8:40 AM on December 9, 2019

For those who have NYT access, this link goes to an online article with video of New York schoolgirls playing clapping games in their native languages.
posted by ALeaflikeStructure at 9:38 AM on December 9, 2019 [2 favorites]

I like that Canadian English is considered a language.
posted by Grither at 10:09 AM on December 9, 2019 [1 favorite]

Thanks for posting this! I still love ELA's "Mother Tongues of Queens" map from a few years back, and the latest fundraiser t-shirt (What better way to say “I love you” than to say “I love NY”, in all six word orders found across human languages?) is neat.
posted by Iris Gambol at 10:31 AM on December 9, 2019 [1 favorite]

I like that Canadian English is considered a language.

And also that Newfoundland English also shows up as a separate dialect (it's in Brooklyn on the map, immediately to the right of Park Slope and above Prospect Park). Some good, b'ys!
posted by hangashore at 10:46 AM on December 9, 2019 [1 favorite]

I'm confused. Is there a map of the most linguistically diverse places in the world somewhere in these links?
posted by rocket88 at 1:00 PM on December 9, 2019

OK, never mind. Just realized you meant a map of 637 languages in one place, not a map of 637 places.
posted by rocket88 at 1:02 PM on December 9, 2019

I have one of these on my wall, it's great.
posted by usr2047 at 5:29 PM on December 9, 2019

Just 700 Speak This Language (50 in the Same Brooklyn Building): Seke, one of the world’s rarest languages, is spoken by about 100 people in New York.

Voices of the Himalaya

After Us, No One Will Speak - Seke

The Mustang region of Nepal previously: Monasteries of Mustang
posted by homunculus at 2:02 PM on January 8, 2020 [1 favorite]