Books & Ideas

We Speak Therefore We Are

John Mitchinson finds inspiration in a book that explores why linguistic diversity is the key to a healthy culture

Within a century from now, roughly half of the 7,000 languages that are spoken today will have disappeared. However you look at this – and there are many who argue that, like biological species extinction, this is simply the result of the churn of time – each time it happens, we lose something irreplaceable and precious.

In her powerful and timely book How to Kill A Language: Power, Resistance and the Race to Save Our Words, published in May, journalist Sophia Smith Galer offers a forceful counterblast against such lazy, entitled linguistic quietism.