491Language
City A
city can be a haven but also an endpoint, a "Babel in reverse" metabolizing the
languages and cultures of the world until none are left.Perlin,
Ross. Language City: The Fight to Preserve Endangered Mother Tongues in New
York. First edition. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2024.Source:https://www.rossperlin.com/language-city Of
the world's approximately seven thousand languages—not counting all the
dialects, sociolects, ethnolects, religiolects, and local varieties—up to half
are likely to disappear over the next few centuries. Languages are being lost
every year. The least documented are the most threatened. Few nonspeakers have
heard of them, and most are used by only the smallest and most marginalized
groups: just 4 percent of the world's population now speaks 96 percent of
the world's languages. Now
home to over seven hundred languages, early twenty-first century New York City
is especially a last improbable refuge for embattled and endangered languages.
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