Language City
The Fight to Preserve Endangered Mother Tongues in New York
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
From the co-director of the Endangered Language Alliance, a captivating portrait of contemporary New York City through six speakers of little-known and overlooked languages, diving into the incredible history of the most linguistically diverse place ever to have existed on the planet
Half of all 7,000-plus human languages may disappear over the next century and—because many have never been recorded—when they’re gone, it will be forever. Ross Perlin, a linguist and co-director of the Manhattan-based non-profit Endangered Language Alliance, is racing against time to map little-known languages across the most linguistically diverse city in history: contemporary New York. In Language City, Perlin recounts the unique history of immigration that shaped the city, and follows six remarkable yet ordinary speakers of endangered languages deep into their communities to learn how they are maintaining and reviving their languages against overwhelming odds. Perlin also dives deep into their languages, taking us on a fascinating tour of unusual grammars, rare sounds, and powerful cultural histories from all around the world.
Seke is spoken by 700 people from five ancestral villages in Nepal, a hundred of whom have lived in a single Brooklyn apartment building. N’ko is a radical new West African writing system now going global in Harlem and the Bronx. After centuries of colonization and displacement, Lenape, the city’s original Indigenous language and the source of the name Manhattan (“the place where we get bows”), has just one fluent native speaker, bolstered by a small band of revivalists. Also profiled in the book are speakers of the Indigenous Mexican language Nahuatl, the Central Asian minority language Wakhi, and the former lingua franca of the Lower East Side, Yiddish.
A century after the anti-immigration Johnson-Reed Act closed America’s doors for decades and on the 400th anniversary of New York’s colonial founding, Perlin raises the alarm about growing political threats and the onslaught of “killer languages” like English and Spanish. Both remarkable social history and testament to the importance of linguistic diversity, Language City is a joyful and illuminating exploration of a city and the world that made it.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
As home to more than 700 languages, New York is "the most linguistically diverse city in the history of the world," writes Perlin (Intern Nation), codirector of the nonprofit Endangered Language Alliance, in this enthralling account of his attempts to document dozens of the rarest languages that have flourished there. He profiles six individuals in Brooklyn and Queens who speak an endangered tongue, among them Rasmina, who lives in a "vertical village" (a six-story apartment building) of some 700 Seke speakers that hail from five towns in northern Nepal. She is working to transcribe and preserve the language, even as the residents transition to speaking the more common Nepali of their neighbors. Other languages featured are Wakhi, which originates from the area where Tajikistan, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and China converge; Nahuatl, which is spoken in remote areas of Mexico; and several West African languages that are being newly transcribed by the unifying N'ko alphabet. Perlin uses language as a window into N.Y.C. history, with engrossing deep dives into, for example, the "Harlemese" of the 1920s (sometimes called "jive") that was influenced by several Black immigrant groups, elements of which quickly caught on around the world. The result is an immersive meander through N.Y.C.'s past and present that brings to the fore its multitudinous nature. Readers will be engrossed.
Customer Reviews
Fascinating read
Learned so much about the range of people who make New York City’s history, how important language is beyond oral communication and got to know some amazing people fighting to save their languages and those like the author and the Endangered Language Alliance who are helping them. A pleasure to read style-wise- an unexpected bonus. And the passion the author feels for what he is doing and the people he works with is heartwarming!