When it comes to the spoken word, Queens truly is the “World’s Borough.”
With as many as 800 languages spoken in the whole city, nowhere else has as many languages spoken as there are in Queens, according to the Endangered Language Alliance (ELA).
Although it is not known exactly how many languages are spoken in Queens, there are over 160 languages spoken throughout the borough, according to the World Economic Forum.
If you’re wondering what languages you might be hearing in certain sections of Queens, you’re in luck. Rebecca Solnit and Joshua Jelly-Schapiro released a book called “Nonstop Metropolis: A New York City Atlas,” which maps out what languages are spoken in certain areas of Queens.
According to the book, between Astoria and Forest Hills alone, you can hear languages such as Greek, Urdu, Indonesian, Filipino, Japanese, Lithuanian and Russian (just to name a few). In Flushing, not only can you hear Madarin, but also pockets of Cantonese, Shanghainese, Taishanese, Sichuanese, and other Chinese dialects.
The World Economic Forum released a video on Facebook showing the information learned from this atlas. See it here:
