October 22, 2024, 2:15pm

Today, the British Academy announced the winner of the 2024 British Academy Book Prize for Global Cultural Understanding, which “celebrates exceptional research and the role of non-fiction in bringing to light new perspectives on global histories and cultural identity.” This year’s winner is Ross Perlin’s Language City: The Fight to Preserve Endangered Mother Tongues.

“Language City is a fascinating, captivating social history and contemporary linguistic account of New York City,” said Professor Charles Tripp, Chair of judges, according to a press release.

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.

Perlin will be awarded £25,000; each shortlisted author will take home £1,000.