15% of Seke speakers live in New York.

From Just 700 Speak This Language (50 in the Same Brooklyn Building) by Kimiko de Freytas-Tamura.

The US is a big nation with large in-migrations. The world is made up of mostly small countries. One of the strange consequences of these facts is that there are a handful of countries where the American population of people from those countries rivals or exceed the head count in the native country.

The example I recall off the top of my head is Cape Verdes. There are just under 550,000 Cape Verdeans in the Cape Verdes. There are 265,000 Cape Verdeans and their descendants in the US.

But I never thought about it in terms of languages until seeing this article.

There are just 700 or so Seke speakers left in the world, according to a recent study by the Endangered Language Alliance, a New York-based organization dedicated to preserving rare languages in the city.

Of those, a little over 100 are in New York, and nearly half of them live in the building in Flatbush.

“I live on the fifth floor. My uncle lives on the second. My cousins live on the sixth, and a family friend lives on the first,” said Rasmina Gurung, 21, who came to New York eight years ago from Chuksang, one of the five villages in Nepal where Seke is spoken and that is known for its apples.

The remaining Seke speakers live in another building in Flatbush or are scattered across Queens.