How to Kill a Language

A globe-spanning investigation into the disappearance of languages that asks: what do we lose – culturally, politically, and personally – when a language dies?

Roughly 7,000 languages are spoken around the world today. Over half of them are expected to vanish in the next century – along with the wealth of information they contain, the family ties they represent, and the psychological benefits they confer. This mass extinction event is one of the most pressing cultural emergencies of our age.

Journalist Sophia Smith Galer journeys across continents and generations to chart the phenomenon of linguicide, or language death, and to uncover what’s behind it. From Ghana to Greece, Ukraine to Ecuador, her travels ultimately lead her back home: to Italy, where piaśintein, the Gallo-Italian language of her grandparents, is on the brink of vanishing forever.

Climate crisis, nationalism and war are decimating our languages – but there’s still hope. Smith Galer also spends time with the communities bringing their languages back, from Kurdish activists in Iran to Karuk campaigners in the forests of California, showing that another future is possible.