skygiants | (no subject)

Entry tags:

(no subject)

The thing about Language City: The Fight to Preserve Endangered Mother Tongues In New York is that when you're talking about a city in terms of its least-spoken languages, you have to be so wonderfully specific. It's not 'Italian immigration,' it's what regions of the area we now know as Italy, and why, and how, and what languages were spoken there, and how those different groups interacted with each other once they were in NYC in different ways than they did in their originally locations.

The first half of Language City presents a kind of linguistic-historical overview of New York; the second half focuses on six speakers of various languages, including Seke, Wakhi, Yiddish, N'ko, Nahuatl and Lenape, who are working with the Endangered Language Alliance (with which the author, Ross Perlin, is affiliated) to preserve and revitalize those languages. It's a good selection of case studies, with interesting variety both in the particular circumstances of the language, how the speakers became particular advocates, and what they hoped to accomplish.

Obviously the Yiddish section made this of particular interest to me, but I found the whole book really fascinating. Perlin is deeply interested in patterns of language shift around migration and cultural connection or collision, has a knack for compelling detail, and doesn't shy away from difficult discussions like the frequent ties between language revitalization and rising nationalism. For me, the book overall struck a really good balance between detailed linguistics discussion, related historical and sociological context, and illustrative personal detail.

Occasionally he got Very Dramatic in his prose style and I wanted to gently tell him to put the alliteration down, and other times he put himself more in the narrative than I would like -- Mr. Perlin, I understand that you are passionate about languages but I personally do not think you should have gone to knock on the door of the last living native speaker of Lenape out of the blue, and I wish I had not heard about it -- but, on the other hand, without the personal anecdotes I would not have gotten the story about going to a market in Tajikistan and finding that an ELA video of someone singing a lullabye in her local endangered language had been remixed into a music video with a sick beat dropped under it and was selling like hot on local DVD, which IMO was the most charming thing in the whole book. Also, I eventually had to just keep my pinky finger tucked into the endnotes so I could easily flip back and forth, because a solid 50% of the endnote provided either a really great anecdote or a citation of a book that I would love to read. I ended up taking pictures on my phone of the entire endnote section before giving the book back to the library.

By the time I was done, I wanted to read another dozen books like it giving me the linguistic histories of various other cities; New York is exceptional in a couple of respects but the language-up version of history and sociology was genuinely such a particular delight for me as an approach that I'm hungry for more of it. Also, unsurprisingly, it was very helpful in re-motivating me regarding putting more work into Yiddish! though Yiddish is honestly in a pretty good position compared to some of the other languages highlighted in this book...

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I went to grad school with the other co-founder of the ELA; it's such a great project.

oh, that's so cool! yeah, I was extremely impressed by the project and their work

the last living Lenape speaker

I hadn't known there was only a last living Lenape speaker. I suppose I had imagined or hoped it was the subject of a revival, like Wôpanâak.

I hope someone does write linguistic histories of cities other than New York. I would like it as a genre.

Edited 2024-08-30 02:33 (UTC)

oops, that's my phrasing error -- it is definitely the subject of a revival, but (as of the time of writing this book) there was only one person left who was a native speaker by the official definition of having grown up speaking it from childhood. All other current speakers have come to it as adult learners, but there are active classes and endeavors to ensure its survival.

(as of the time of writing this book) there was only one person left who was a native speaker by the official definition of having grown up speaking it from childhood. All other current speakers have come to it as adult learners, but there are active classes and endeavors to ensure its survival.

Thank you for this clarification! I still don't like that it was eradicated to one last native speaker, but I am glad to know of the revival.

Someone was just telling me that 332 languages are spoken in London, which doesn't have a patch on NYC, but would still make for a cool (and potentially interestingly different) way of talking about London and its recent history.

Yes!! I'd love to read that.

There's still a living speaker of Lenape?? I thought it had gone extinct before the Trail of Tears! That's so cool.

Yeah! who apparently is constantly beset by linguists showing up at her doorstep ....

this sounds like a fascinating book for sure! I love it when a book gets wonderfully specific. but what it makes me want is the linguistic history of some canadian city rather than of course it being about new york.

I agree the book sounds good, and I will also note that we in the US who don't live in New York also get tired of everything being about New York.

yeahhh that doesn't surprise me. new york exceptionalism is so real!

to be fair as much as I want linguistic histories of all kinds of cities I think there are a lot of good reasons for this book in particular to be about New York -- both in terms of the specifics of how it got written (the Endangered Language Alliance is in New York! a good hub and focal point for a book about endangered languages!) and generally in terms of the fact that it is undeniably the most linguistically diverse city in the world .... like I also get annoyed about New York exceptionalism but this one I think is valid!

depends on how you count linguistic diversity! number of languages spoken, period - yes, it's new york. number of languages spoken by a significant sub-population of the city? it's toronto, actually! 17 different languages are spoken by at least 1% of the population of toronto, whereas new york has only 14. so a book about toronto linguistic diversity would by its nature be a different book than one about new york linguistic diversity, but would be just as interesting to study, I think. And Guatemala City has the greatest diversity of indigenous languages spoken! I would love to read about Guatemala City's languages!

in the end notes the author describes the book as being about 'languages about which not enough has been written and a city about which too much has been written' which made me laugh (although I am also part of the problem, I love NYC history and will happily keep reading it forever)

Oh wonderful! I hadn't heard of this one, but I'm adding it to my to-read list RIGHT NOW.

I really recommend it, will be excited to hear your thoughts if you read it!

This book sounds fabulous, going to mark it as to-read for later.

My former tutee from El Salvador showed me a Salvadoran government initiative to teach Nahuatl--it's available for free on YouTube. (One thing my tutee and I had in common was love of languages. I was helping her practice English, but we were both also learning Portuguese, and she was briefly interested in doing the Nahuatl.)

And how great that the book was such a treasure trove for future reading!

And I love the lullaby story <3

oh, that's so cool! Yeah, I think this book would be right up your alley -- I hope you enjoy it if you read it. :D

Of possible local interest concerning endangered languages. Wopanaak had gone dormant for generations and now they are trying to bring it back. When I first heard about it, I thought about how lucky we are with Yiddish, which has so many native speakers I'm not sure it's even endangered.
https://www.wlrp.org/

Yes, I recently watched the documentary about Wôpanâak (with some of my Yiddish-learner friends, actually!), which was incredibly fascinating.

Yiddish is in an interesting position because it has an active, growing native speaker population, but most of that population is discouraged or forbidden from accessing all the once-thriving Yiddish secular culture of the 19th and 20th centuries; the complexity of that dynamic is one of the things that the Yiddish section of the book is definitely interested in digging into.

Yes, the cultural constraints on that community are fascinating. Although a lot of people dip their toes OTD, they look to Hollywood rather than to old Yiddish vaudeville and so forth. I once talked to somebody who worked for NYC, translating public health information into Yiddish. (They probably translated other stuff into Yiddish. But safer sex information needs to be fairly explicit and is hilarious.)

This book sounds amazing. I think I will recommend it to Geeklet, who is thinking of linguistics.

oh, definitely it would be a great read for anyone thinking of linguistics as a field!

I have read this and really liked it! It made me feel "why am I doing anything with my life other than frantically learning languages...". Like you I wish there were similar editions for other cities, although I'm myself inclined to be NY-centric; I feel like I would read any number of books that just went into detail on "little language/cultural pockets in assorted cities and the people who live in them."

sajdlkf right I felt the same! and yeah, I love NYC history and the fact that this one is an NYC history is part of why I picked it up, but I finished it and immediately hungered for more of the same. Come to Boston and tell me about linguistic pockets here please!

I put this on my TBR list a few weeks ago (having decided sometime during my French class that I want Yiddish to be the next language I tackle once I've built French practice into my schedule) but haven't read it yet, so I'll have to report back. (Would also be curious if you found any other interesting-looking books on Yiddish in the endnotes!)

YESSS join me in Yiddishland! I'm very excited to hear about your journey and will gladly practice with you if ever you want! (The book suggests Max Weinreich's History of the Yiddish Language and Lingering Bilingualism: Modern Hebrew and Yiddish Literatures In Contact; unrelated to Yiddish but this section also recommends the movie Brighton 4th about NYC's Russian-speaking community in Brighton Beach.)

Oh that sounds cool! I wonder if there's something similar for Paris?

Let me know if you find one, because I'd like to read it!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only