How to Kill a Language: Power, Resistance and the Race to Save Our Words

by Sophia Smith Galer

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.

Genres: Nonfiction, Language, Linguistics, History, Research

289 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 7, 2026

Reviews

[Grace Btrs]

I've followed Sophia for quite a few years now. I've always admired the way she speaks about language and uses inter-disciplinary commentary to take language beyond phonetic and grammatical usages, to stories of humans.
So I was super excited when I saw she wrote this book and couldn't wait to get my hands on it!

To my delight, I was having a conversation yesterday with a colleague, and she said, "I went to a book launch last week, and I think you would be very interested in it", and proceeded to share that Sophia used to work with her husband (journalist) and share this title.

I have received this as an eARC from Crown Publishing and Netgalley.
I unfortunately have been very overwhelmed and couldn't get to it before, but I just wanted to share my excitement.

[Mai H.]

Non-fiction November TBR

📱 Thank you to NetGalley and Crown

[Graeme · Rating 5 out of 5]

I often find books on language and linguistics can be overly academic and impersonal, which is why this book is so refreshing. The title might make you think this book is all about what's killing minority languages but if anything it's about the people themselves who speak these languages and their love and determination to keep them alive. It's made me determined to learn finally learn Welsh which I think means the book has done exactly what it's set out to do.

[Lucy Brewer · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book! So readable and engaging throughout, it introduced me to places, people, languages, music.

The only two negatives are it’s making me want to learn Napoletano on top of Italian which I do *not* have time for right now, and the final page had me in tears.

[Salomée Lou · Rating 5 out of 5]

I haven't annotated a book like this in a long time. So many mind-blowing moments where I had to stop and digest what I had just learnt. A lot of it is so relatable and mirrors my own story, I, too, am a (great-grand) child of italian immigrants who uprooted their lives to pursue a better life for themselves and their children. I too, lost the language and a whole history when my great-grand mother passed. There's also a dialect that will probably die with my other grandmother when she leaves us too and the thought of it makes my heart ache. I can understand it but I cannot speak it. Essays and non-fiction can sometimes be dense and feel inaccessible. But Sophia Smith Galer weaves meticulous research with her own story, and the result is informative and moving. I urge everyone to pre-order it (with your local indie bookshop) and watch out for any writings and / or projects that Sophia will put out into the world next.