'Moving, beautiful and important' FINANCIAL TIMES, BEST SUMMER BOOKS 2026

'Punchy and persuasive' SUNDAY TIMES

'Moving, beautiful and important' FINANCIAL TIMES, BEST SUMMER BOOKS 2026

'Punchy and persuasive' SUNDAY TIMES

As Sophia Smith Galer’s Nonna lay dying, she realised it wasn’t just a beloved grandmother she was losing – it was the language she spoke, too. From Northern Italy, she spoke a dialët that Sophia, like so many children and grandchildren of migrants, can understand but can’t speak. With the death of the language, Sophia would lose a culture, a history, an inheritance – a whole world.

This tragedy reaches far beyond her family. Globally we are witnessing an unprecedented mass extinction event. By the end of this century half of the world’s 7000 languages will be gone, killed by war, climate breakdown, migration, nationalism or neglect, along with the vital knowledge that they have sustained for centuries.

Award-winning journalist Smith Galer has journeyed across continents and generations to report from this disappearing world. From Ghana to Greece, Ecuador to Oman, California to the UK, she meets people experiencing this loss at first hand – but also campaigners and linguists who prove that a multilingual future is still possible. Her travels ultimately lead her back to where she began: to Italy, and the tiny mountainside village where the church bells still ring out for her Nonna.

How to Kill a Language is an impassioned investigation into a hidden global crisis, and a call to speak, read and write the languages of our world, before it’s too late.

'An extremely moving, passionate plea' CAL FLYN

'Everyone should read this book' OLIA HERCULES

Details

ISBN13: 9780008723729
Format: Hardback
Number of Pages: 304
Edition:
Publication Date: 01 Sep 2026
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Publication City, Country: London, United Kingdom
Dimensions (cm): 24(H)x15.9(L)x3(W)500
Weight (gm): 500

Author Biography

Sophia is a reporter, writer and documentary maker with the BBC World Service, specialising in religion and digital culture. She is the first BBC journalist to be on TikTok and has accrued over 200,000 followers across social media. She was named as a 'Voice of Change' in the TikTok 100 best of 2020 and sits as an inaugural member of the TikTok Creator Council. She was also selected as a One to Watch by the Edinburgh Television Festival in 2020 and has a Webby in Social Media for Arts and Culture. This will be her first book.

Reviews

'Punchy and persuasive … speaking an endangered language is an act of defiance and connection – of love' SUNDAY TIMES
‘Moving, beautiful and important … The narrative grips from the outset … The driving spirit of How to Kill a Language is, despite its title, not death, but life’ FINANCIAL TIMES
‘A rallying cry against linguistic extinction … This is a necessary book, with a message that English speakers need to hear’ NEW STATESMAN
‘Urgent and timely … what animates it above all is the curiosity and pleasure of language learning – a curiosity that is its own form of hope’ THE TELEGRAPH
'An essential voice' THE GUARDIAN
'Galer casts a bright light on the massive linguistic diversity that the world seems set to lose … Every language that dies takes with it such fascinating stories' NEW YORK TIMES
'[A] deep dive into 10 of the 7,000 languages predicted to be extinct by the turn of the century … a fascinating account' THE i PAPER
'Everyone should read this book. Impressively researched, full of empathy and a page-turner to boot' OLIA HERCULES
‘An extremely moving, passionate plea. This fascinating book digs down into what it really means to translate, conserve, comprehend, colonise’ CAL FLYN, author of Islands of Abandonment
‘I have long marvelled at the work of Sophia Smith Galer … she is a passionate advocate for language diversity – most recently in her fascinating new book’ PANDORA SYKES
'Beautiful, thought-provoking and compelling' SUSIE DENT
'Erudite, heart-wrenching … a spirited reconsideration' PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
‘Shines an intimate light on a pressing issue … revealing the powerfully human stakes behind language death and revitalization’ ADAM ALEKSIC, author of Algospeak
'Hits the intersection of language and power as few other books have' ROSS PERLIN, author of Language City
‘This is the best book on language endangerment I have ever read. A love letter to languages … both intellectually rigorous and yet profoundly moving’ DAVID CRYSTAL, author of Language Death