Over the course of six years, the Endangered Language Alliance (ELA) put together a map that “shows NYC’s linguistic diversity in more detail than ever before.”
Featured in the “Nonstop Metropolis: A New York City Atlas” the map below illustrates both the official and unofficial languages of each area, but doesn’t repeat languages. Meaning multiple places in Queens can speak any one of the languages listed, but you will only see it on the map where it is likely most popular.
The highest density and diversity of languages seems to be in the area spanning from Long Island City and Astoria, to Corona. Here you’ll hear countless languages like Greek, Filipino, Urdu, Nepali, Portuguese, Croatian, Polish, Japanese and Russian. Or instead you might hear Armenian, Bulgarian, Finnish, Latvian, Lithuanian, Tibetan, and Tamil (to name only a handful). The list breaks down further into sub-languages of each.
Featured image source and all images in story: Edited by: Rebecca Solnit and Joshua Jelly-Schapiro/Cartography: Molly Roy/Photographs: Mirissa Neff