Book on endangered languages wins coveted British culture award

Ross Perlin won the annual award for his book ‘Language City: The Fight to Preserve Endangered Mother Tongues’.

A book that charts how endangered languages are preserved in the modern world has won this year’s British Academy Book Prize for Global Cultural Understanding.
The annual Book Prize for Global Cultural Understanding, created by the British Academy in 2013, has awarded American writer Ross Perlin the £25,000 (€30,100) prize for his non-fiction work ‘Language City: The Fight to Preserve Endangered Mother Tongues’.
‘Language City’ charts the history of migration into New York via the languages of different cultures entering the area, overwhelming the indigenous Lenape speakers. He then traces that history through to the present with six case studies of endangered language speakers in New York.
Throughout the book, Perlin examines how endangered languages survive through the resilience of their cultural communities, how their unique grammar and syntaxes work, and what we can learn about diverse cultures through studying these languages.
“New York City is home to more than 700 languages – ‘the most linguistically diverse city in the history of the world’ – and by examining them Perlin opens out new ways of thinking about the exuberant variety of these aspects of the urban soundscape, which we might otherwise take for granted or ignore,” Professor Charles Tripp FBA, one of the judges commented.
“Perlin’s research is dynamic and immediate; it is about what is happening now, right in front of us, as we witness the flux of everyday life. It was a real pleasure for the judges to read, even if our reading was tinged with concern for the subjects of these entrancing narratives,” Tripp added.
Professor Julia Black, President of the British Academy commented on the status of the academy’s book prize in celebrating “exceptional research” and non-fiction works that highlight new perspectives on global culture. “‘Language City’ is a beautifully crafted social history and a stark reminder of the human connection that languages enable,” she said.
“We know from our own work at the Academy that the take-up of language study is in decline and there is an urgent need to reverse this trend. This book perfectly captures what’s at stake if we don’t act now to preserve and enhance languages and the study of them. We believe that a linguistically diverse society benefits everyone and this book demonstrates that perfectly.”
Perlin is a linguist, writer, and translator from New York City, which he specifies as “Lenapehoking” on his website, referring to the Lenape people whose land became the area from Connecticut to Delaware.
He is the author of ‘Intern Nation: How to Earn Nothing and Learn Little in the Brave New Economy’ about unpaid work and youth economics. Since 2013, Perlin has served as co-director of the non-profit Endangered Language Alliance, with which he oversees research projects focused on language documentation, mapping, policy, and public programming.
Perlin is the 12th winner of the British Academy Book Prize for Global Cultural Understanding receiving the top award of £25,000 (€30,100). The five other shortlisted nominees also receive £1,000 (€1,200).
Selected from 263 submissions, the five other shortlisted books were ‘Material World: A Substantial Story of Our Past and Future’ by Ed Conway; ‘Smoke and Ashes: Opium’s Hidden Histories’ by Amitav Ghosh; ‘The Secret Lives of Numbers: A Global History of Mathematics & Its Unsung Trailblazers’ by Kate Kitagawa and Timothy Revell; ‘The Tame and the Wild: People and Animals’ after 1492 by Marcy Norton; and ‘Divided: Racism, Medicine and Why We Need to Decolonise Healthcare’ by Annabel Sowemimo.
Last year’s winner was Nandini Das whose book ‘Courting India: England, Mughal India and the Origins of Empire’ retold the history of Britain and India through the arrival of the first English ambassador in India, Sir Thomas Roe, in the early 17th century.