“A fascinating, captivating social history and contemporary linguistic account of New York City” Professor Charles Tripp, Chair of judges
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Wednesday 23 October, LONDON: Language City: The Fight to Preserve Endangered Mother Tongues by Ross Perlin was last night named as the winner of the 12th British Academy Book Prize for Global Cultural Understanding. The announcement was made by Chair of judges, Professor Charles Tripp FBA, at a celebration at the British Academy.
Ross Perlin is a linguist and co-director of the Manhattan-based non-profit Endangered Language Alliance, an organisation dedicated to documenting endangered languages and supporting linguistic diversity.
In Language City: The Fight to Preserve Endangered Mother Tongues, Perlin writes engagingly of the history of migration into New York and of the languages and cultures that came to the city, overwhelming the Lenape speakers who were the original inhabitants of the territory. He brings this linguistic mix alive in the present by following the personal stories of six remarkable speakers of endangered languages to fully understand the resilience of their communities and the richness of their languages. Language City is not only a story about New York City, but about all great metropolises. It is one that has global resonance.
Ross Perlin is also the author of Intern Nation: How to Earn Nothing and Learn Little in the Brave New Economy about unpaid work and youth economics. He has written for the New York Times, The Guardian, Harper’s, the literary magazine n+1. He was a New Arizona Fellow at New America, and he is from New York City.
Commenting on behalf of the judges, Professor Charles Tripp said:
“Language City is a fascinating, captivating social history and contemporary linguistic account of New York City. It offers readers a unique perspective of the city that brings out both the precarity but also the resilience of migrants and their rich and varied languages as they seek to adapt their native tongues to 21st century urban life. At a time when many languages worldwide are disappearing, Ross Perlin celebrates the subtleties of linguistic diversity, treating each with sensitivity and humanity.
“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.
“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. Yet we also saw in this an affirmation of the wealth of the cultures embodied in these languages and the determination and ingenuity of their speakers to retain something of great value – a determination shared by the author and enhanced by his work with the Endangered Language Alliance.”
Professor Julia Black, President of the British Academy, added:
“The British Academy Book Prize celebrates exceptional research and the role of non-fiction in bringing to light new perspectives on global histories and cultural identity. Language City is a beautifully crafted social history and a stark reminder of the human connection that languages enable. We know from our own work at theAcademy 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.
“On behalf of the British Academy, it is my great honour to congratulate Ross Perlin for his exceptional work.”
As the winner of the prize, Ross Perlin will receive £25,000. Each of the shortlisted writers will receive £1,000. Language City: The Fight to Preserve Endangered Mother Tongues was chosen from a shortlist of six books that included: 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 byAnnabel Sowemimo. The shortlist was selected from 263 submissions, published between 1 April 2023 and 31 March 2024.
Professor Charles Tripp was joined on the 2024 judging panel by Professor Rebecca Earle FBA, food historian and Professor of History at the University of Warwick; the former BBC foreign correspondent Bridget Kendall Hon FBA; journalist and broadcaster Ritula Shah; and Professor Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad FBA, Distinguished Professor of Comparative Religion and Philosophy at Lancaster University.
The British Academy Book Prize was established in 2013 to reward and celebrate the best works of non-fiction that demonstrate rigour and originality and have contributed to public understanding of world cultures and their interaction. The international prize is open to authors of any nationality.
The winner in 2023 was Nandini Das for Courting India: England, Mughal India and the Origins of Empire.
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