Tuesday, 15 April 2025

new york, city of endangered languages

Last year, American author Ross Perlin won the British Academy Book Prize for Global Cultural Understanding for his book "Language City: The Fight to Preserve Endangered Mother Tongues"

Ross Perlin wins the £25k British Academy Prize for his book on endangered languages

It's now the Book of the Week on BBC Radio 4: 

Linguist Ross Perlin is racing against time to map little-known languages across the most linguistically diverse city in history - contemporary New York.

BBC Sounds - Language City by Ross Perlin - Available Episodes

Prof Perlin set up the ELA in NY:

Founded in 2010, the Endangered Language Alliance (ELA) is a non-profit dedicated to documenting Indigenous, minority, and endangered languages, supporting linguistic diversity in New York City and beyond.

Home - Endangered Language Alliance

Here's the project:

New York has long been a city of immigrants, but linguists now consider it a laboratory for studying and preserving languages in rapid decline elsewhere in the world.

N.Y./Region: City of Endangered Languages | The New York Times - YouTube

And there are indeed some very interesting projects coming out of this:

Revitalizing endangered Indigenous languages that have little or no digital presence is challenging with artificial intelligence—but not impossible.

Some endangered language speakers get creative with AI preservation efforts — WHYY

On any given Sunday in New York City, an evangelical church of Guatemalan immigrants in Brooklyn worships in the indigenous Mayan language K’iche’; a South Indian Orthodox church in Queens chants liturgies in Syriac, the first-century descendant of Aramaic; and a Mennonite church in the Bronx conducts services in Garifuna, a rare language developed from the marriages of West African slaves and Indigenous Caribbean people.

How NYC Churches Guard Endangered Languages - Christianity Today

The linguist’s celebration of the polyglot city inspires a series of shows at Manhattan’s Little Island.

Ross Perlin writes a love letter to New York — in Yiddish and 699 other languages - New York Jewish Week

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