NEW & SIGNED How to Kill a Language by Sophia Smith Galer | Blackwells.co.uk

Added: 2026-05-17

[00:00:00]In my family, we have an endangered language, which means that what was my grandmother's mother tongue will probably disappeared by the time I enter my 90s. It was a constant soundscape in my life that tethered my family in London all the way back to a house in the middle of nowhere in northern Italy, where my family cared for the land, be it through raising livestock, growing food, even defending it from the Nazis.

[00:00:25]But, it's not only me who has lost the language, a granddaughter in diaspora who understands it, recognizes its faint echo, but cannot speak it.

[00:00:35]Even back in Italy, this language variety is endangered. Parents have largely stopped passing it to their children, and schools do not teach them.

[00:00:44]As a granddaughter, I've written a book in which I hope to show you the emotions at the heart of language loss and what is an aggressive collapse of linguistic diversity around the world. Around half of the world's languages are endangered.

[00:00:58]But, as a journalist, I knew I had to tell you the full story, not only about what has happened to languages like Emilian in Italy, but what is happening to languages around the world today.

[00:01:10]Some with many speakers, some with very few now, which are all vulnerable to a phenomenon called linguicide. That's when a language overtly or covertly is suppressed and marginalized to the point that speakers stop using it altogether.

[00:01:26]I'm not talking about conscientious language shift or change, or languages naturally evolving and meandering. I'm talking about the languages whose speakers are criminalized or persecuted.

[00:01:39]I'm talking about speakers made to feel shame for their mother tongues, speakers told that their languages are not worth being taught at schools.

[00:01:47]I'm talking about immigrants being told their languages are a problem, not a resource. I'm talking about living languages that the internet seems to have forgotten about. How to kill a language is the story of 10 languages today which paint a picture for all languages demonstrating how attitudes, policies, and decisions shape which languages live and die.

[00:02:09]I chart the solutions that many are finding to reclaim and revitalize and research before it's too late. And whatever language you speak, it's my every wish that you finish my book realizing that this world glitters with language diversity and that every one of us, whether we speak one language or five, has a role to play in protecting it.