Samantha Ellis

The problem with trying to resuscitate dying languages

Ross Perlin is determined to support the ‘last speakers’ of endangered tongues, such as Seke. But if these speakers really are the last, they are not, in any real sense, speaking

Ross Perlin. [Credit: Cecil Howell] 
issue 09 March 2024
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  • Language City: The Fight to Preserve Endangered Mother Tongues

    Ross Perlin

    Grove, pp. 432, £12

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It is the great good fortune of Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand to be united by a common language, and a misfortune of even greater magnitude that they share that language with the United States. America is a very different country to the four Commonwealth realms sometimes brigaded together under the ugly acronym ‘Canzuk’.

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