Half of the languages spoken on Earth (7,000-plus) may disappear this century. And because many have never been recorded, when they’re gone, it will be forever. Ross Perlin, a linguist and co-director of the non-profit Endangered Language Alliance, is racing to map little-known languages across the most linguistically diverse city in history, New York. In Language City: The Fight to Preserve Endangered Mother Tongues in New York, he follows six remarkable yet ordinary speakers of endangered languages deep into their communities, from the streets of Brooklyn and Queens to villages on the other side of the world, to learn how they are maintaining and reviving their languages against the odds. He explores the languages themselves, from rare sounds to sentence-long words to bits of grammar that encode entirely different worldviews.

On the 100th anniversary of the law that closed America’s borders for decades and the 400th anniversary of NYC’s colonial founding, Perlin raises the alarm about this growing threat and the onslaught of “killer languages” like English and Spanish, while celebrating New York’s profound linguistic diversity and the joy of tuning into this modern Babel.

Nancy Foner, author or editor of twenty books, including From Ellis Island to JFK: New York's Two Great Waves of Immigration, joins in conversation.