Sophia Smith Galer on How to Kill a Language

Sophia Smith Galer on How to Kill a Language

It's estimated that every month a language goes extinct. Journalist Sophia Smith Galer explores the full measure of this loss in a timely, personal, and empowering account of linguistic acts of resistance.

As Sophia Smith Galer's Nonna lay dying, she realised it wasn't just a beloved grandmother she was losing - it was the language she spoke, too. From Northern Italy, she spoke a dialect that Sophia, like so many children and grandchildren of migrants, can understand but can't speak. With the death of the language, Sophia would lose a culture, a history, an inheritance - a whole world.

This tragedy reaches far beyond her family. Globally we are witnessing an unprecedented mass extinction event. By the end of this century half of the world's 7000 languages will be gone, killed by war, climate breakdown, migration, nationalism or neglect, along with the vital knowledge that they have sustained for centuries.

Award-winning journalist Smith Galer has journeyed across continents and generations to report from this disappearing world. From Ghana to Greece, Ecuador to Oman, California to the UK, she meets people experiencing this loss at first hand - but also campaigners and linguists who prove that a multilingual future is still possible. Her travels ultimately lead her back to where she began: to Italy, and the tiny mountainside village where the church bells still ring out for her Nonna.

How to Kill a Language is an impassioned investigation into a hidden global crisis, and a call to speak, read and write the languages of our world, before it's too late.

Sophia Smith Galer is an award-winning journalist, author and content creator based in London. She won the British Journalism Award for Innovation of the Year for her work, as well as recognition on lists such as Forbes Under 30 and British Vogue's 25 Most Influential Women in the UK. She has reported across four continents for the BBC and VICE News; her videos have been seen more than 160 million times on TikTok and Instagram where she explores etymology, language rights and linguistics. She studied Spanish and Arabic at Durham University and her family speak Italian and a variety of Emilian.