How To Kill A Language, with Sophia Smith Galer (Part Two)

Summary

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Intelligence Squared: How To Kill A Language, with Sophia Smith Galer (Part Two)

Date: May 26, 2026
Guests: Sophia Smith Galer (journalist and author), Maryam Moshiri (BBC News, event moderator), Audience Q&A
Overview:
This live episode, hosted at the Kiln Theatre, explores the urgent global crisis of language extinction—'linguicide.' Drawing from Sophia Smith Galer's book, How To Kill A Language, the discussion dives into what is lost when languages disappear, why linguicide happens, and the resilient efforts worldwide to revive endangered languages. The session features insightful audience Q&A and real lived experiences from speakers and listeners alike.

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Main Themes and Purpose

• Impact of Linguicide: What humanity loses when a language dies, including history, identity, and worldviews.
• Revival and Resurgence: How certain communities and governments have fought language loss and achieved resurgence.
• Barriers and Challenges: Internalized shame, policy failures, and lack of institutional support hindering heritage language transmission.
• Community, Diaspora, and Grassroots Action: The critical role of community efforts, diaspora networks, and technology in language preservation.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Responsibility of Language Transmission

Host and Sophia reflect on personal regrets and the societal context of passing on heritage language.

• Mother’s Role & Gendered Expectations
  • It's often assumed that mothers bear the greatest responsibility in language transmission, but this is connected to broader gender roles, not a 'secret superpower.'

    "It's believed that mothers have twice the influence on the sort of language planning of their child compared to the father. Now, do we think that's because women have the secret inherent superpower or do we think it's because of gender roles?" — Sophia Smith Galer (03:37)

  • The lack of community or institutional support, especially in multinational or diaspora contexts, can hinder the persistence of heritage languages.

    "It actually needs. It needs a village. It does need a village, it needs a community." — Sophia Smith Galer (04:13)

2. Successful Revivals: Welsh, Cornish, Maori, Hebrew

Exploring examples where threatened languages have come back from the brink.

• Welsh and Cornish

  • Welsh is a prime example, with children now the largest group of speakers—a mark of real resurgence.

    "The biggest group of Welsh speakers right now are children. And this is the sign of not only a lively language, but a language in resurgence." — Sophia Smith Galer (06:31)

  • Cornish was declared extinct but now boasts at least 500 speakers.

• Maori in New Zealand

  • The "kahanga reo" (language nests) system is highlighted: nurseries staffed by elders fluent in Maori create thriving intergenerational linguistic communities.
  • Missed generations are being addressed, with children speaking better Maori or Welsh than their parents.

• Hebrew’s Reinvention

  • Once a 'dead' language used primarily in religious contexts, modern Hebrew was revived as the foundational language of Israel.

    "A couple of hundred years ago, there actually wasn't a speaker of Hebrew. ... It had fallen out of daily use and it had become sacralized, used primarily in religious contexts." — Sophia Smith Galer (06:54)

3. Language, Identity, and Political Tensions

Language extinction is often political, tied to nationhood and cultural power.

• Latin & Language and Identity in Mass

  • Changes to Latin’s use in Catholic Mass sparked cultural outcry, highlighting the emotional attachment even to 'dead' languages more than to living, threatened ones.

    "...an affront to an important cultural heritage. ... Would they show up like this for the UK's living but threatened languages?" — Sophia Smith Galer (08:36)

• Language Planning Without Community Buy-in

  • Top-down language planning, such as in Belgium, that does not reflect real community needs leads to resentment and practical barriers for speakers.

4. The Challenge of Diaspora and Urban Multilingualism

Audience members raise the struggles of maintaining language use outside homeland environments.

• Irish in London
  • Despite a large Irish diaspora, Irish speakers in London find little infrastructure for everyday use outside organized events, unlike for languages like Arabic (11:00–12:00).
  • Revival efforts in diaspora often rely on enthusiastic volunteers rather than formal support:

    "A lot of this work is basically just being done by very keen volunteers." — Sophia Smith Galer (12:01)

5. Technology and Language Preservation

Apps and digital resources are powerful but vulnerable.

• App Developers Fighting the Odds

  • A language app founder (Utalk) shares their mission to cover as many languages as possible, underscoring challenges faced by grassroots tech projects in the absence of governmental or international support (15:50–17:10).
  • Risks include abrupt loss of hard-fought resources, as with Memrise shutting down user-generated endangered language content.

    "With it, all of these resources that speakers had been assembling for ages suddenly lost them." — Sophia Smith Galer (15:59)

• Limits of International Protection

  • There is no international crime of “linguicide”; language rights are patchily covered in human rights law.

    "...there is no international body [that would rally around linguicide]...UNESCO really are the only sort of international place that looks at this kind of stuff." — Sophia Smith Galer (17:06)

6. Shame, Loss, and Heritage Language Identity

Personal struggles with minority/heritage languages—overcoming shame, building linguistic self-esteem.

• Shame as a Language Killer
  • Linguistic shame, often internalized rather than externally imposed, is a critical factor in language loss.

    "Shame is one of the biggest language killers. ... We're very good at making ourselves feel ashamed with very little external effort." — Sophia Smith Galer (21:13)

  • The antidote: “shameless” language learning and embracing mistakes, formalized in Sophia’s Italian language bar rules:

    "Speak Italian, make mistakes, drink. Those are the three rules..." — Sophia Smith Galer (22:53)

7. Language Policy, Education, and Healthcare Failures

• Healthcare Myths

  • Widespread (but incorrect) belief persists in some professionals that children with learning difficulties should only learn one language, leading to avoidable language loss.

    "It is commonly described as misinformation by linguists when they hear about children being told to only speak one language." — Sophia Smith Galer (28:13)

• Hostility to Multilingualism

  • Recent UK political attempts to restrict foreign languages in public life are cited as evidence of a broader unsupportive climate.

8. Dialect vs. Language: Power and Definition

• Political Definitions Suppress Dialects
  • “A language is a dialect with an army and a navy”—labeling dialects as “not real languages” is a frequent strategy to devalue them and restrict public use.

    "...languages are described as dialects with the means to devalue them and not include them in areas of public life. Or more often than not, it's actually about not giving their speakers power..." — Sophia Smith Galer (30:30)

9. The Future for Arabic and Its Dialects

• Arabic Compared to Latin?
  • The fate of Arabic’s diverse dialects—will it split as Latin did?—is debated, with mixed opinions in linguistics and strong political associations.

    "Trying to learn Levantine compared to modern standard did feel like learning two different yet overlapping languages. ... Some people contest that because they associate it with a means to divide the Arab world." — Sophia Smith Galer (31:52)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On language revival's promise and complexity:

  "The biggest group of Welsh speakers right now are children. And this is the sign of not only a lively language, but a language in resurgence." — Sophia Smith Galer (06:31)

• On the emotional core of language loss:

  "Shame is one of the biggest language killers...You don't always need another person to give it to you. We're very good at making ourselves feel ashamed with very little external effort." — Sophia Smith Galer (21:13)

• On policy and power:

  "...languages are described as dialects with the means to devalue them and not include them in areas of public life. ... it's actually about not giving their speakers power..." — Sophia Smith Galer (30:30)

• On community effort:

  "A lot of this work is basically just being done by very keen volunteers." — Sophia Smith Galer (12:01)

• On “shameless” language learning:

  "The best language learners in the world are not good at languages, they're shameless." — Sophia Smith Galer (22:40)

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Timestamps of Key Segments

• [03:20] Challenges and regret of not passing on heritage language (host & Sophia)
• [04:43] Examples of language resurgence (Welsh, Cornish, Maori, Hebrew)
• [09:24] Audience Q&A: Irish in diaspora, grassroots language bars
• [15:50] Technology and language apps: risks and ambitions (Utalk founder)
• [19:21] Heritage language shame and overcoming it
• [23:59] Bilingualism, fake bilingualism, and language policy failures (Belgium)
• [26:38] Language loss in healthcare and education systems
• [29:57] “A language is a dialect with an army and a navy”—politics of definition
• [31:16] The fate and unity/diversity of Arabic dialects

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Tone and Style

• Intelligent, evidence-based, but accessible; grounded in real experience—often impassioned and empathetic.
• Often humorous and self-aware, especially around the personal and social vulnerabilities at the heart of language loss.

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Takeaways

• Linguicide is not only a matter of policy or neglect, but also shame, identity, and structural bias.
• Revival is possible—but requires community, institutional support, and often, grassroot passion.
• Technology can amplify language preservation but carries risks if not empathically managed and properly resourced.
• Language status is always political—definitions of ‘language’ versus ‘dialect’ are powerful tools for inclusion or exclusion.
• The best antidote to language loss? Community, shameless learning, making mistakes, and conscious, inclusive planning.

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For listeners or readers, this episode offers not only a roadmap to the complexity of language death and revival, but also a call to action for both individual and collective responsibility in sustaining linguistic diversity.

Transcript

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[Mia Sorrenti]

welcome to Intelligence Squared, where great minds meet. I'm producer mia Sorrenti. Roughly 7,000 languages are spoken around the world today, over half of them are expected to vanish in the next century. So what do we lose when a language dies? In this episode, we return for part two of our live event with journalist Sophia Smith Gaylor. Smith Gaylor joined us recently at the Kiln Theatre to discuss the global crisis of linguicide. She was in conversation with chief presenter at BBC News, Maryam Mosh Luxury live at the Kiln Theatre. Smith Gaylor drew on her new book, How To Kill A Language, to explore what happens when languages vanish and with them, histories, identities and ways of understanding the world. From Italy to Iran, Ghana to California, she examines both the forces driving linguistic extinction and the communities fighting to keep endangered languages alive. If you haven't heard part one, do just jump back an episode to catch up. But now let's return to the conversation live at the Kiln Theatre in London.

[Event Moderator]

I feel like when my kids were born I was. I really wanted to speak far to them. I'm Iranian and I didn't. And now I seriously regret it because they're never going to learn the language. They have no interest in it and no ability to understand it and they can't speak to my mum properly because.

[Sophia Smith Gaylor]

But also. But it was not entirely on you. You have a partner and even though there is English, but regardless, the partner is not absolved of linguistic responsibility. So this is, as with most studies in the world, they've been done on heterosexual relationships. But it's believed that mothers have twice the influence on the sort of language planning of their child compared to the father. Now, do we think that's because women have the secret inherent superpower or do we think it's because of gender roles? Superpower, yeah. So there's that. And then also, what was the Farsi language support around you growing up when you were, like, when you went to antenatal classes, were they telling you about, oh, by the way, anyone got any languages and families besides English? Here's some advice on how to keep it. You know, it actually needs. It needs a village. It does need a village, it needs a community. It was never all on you, but if you felt it was all on you, that's probably why the languages didn't. Didn't keep going.

[Event Moderator]

What are the good examples of languages that have had a resurgence that have kind of been brought back or brought up again?

[Sophia Smith Gaylor]

Welsh. We got any Welsh? Come on.

[Audience Member 1]

Yeah.

[Sophia Smith Gaylor]

Yes. Welsh in the uk we've got. Welsh is one of our, you know, most commonly cited examples. Even Cornish. Cornish was once deemed extinct and now there are at least 500 people.

[Event Moderator]

So it wasn't extinct. So why were they saying it was extinct?

[Sophia Smith Gaylor]

I know. You tell him, Marianne, you tell him.

[Event Moderator]

BBC News.

[Sophia Smith Gaylor]

Is Marian Mashiro very annoyed by Maori? I mean Maori? I wish I would have loved to go to New Zealand for this book. Please make them pay me to write book too, because I would love to go and witness all the fantastic work that has gone into the revival of Mori. That's a really cool thing that happened in Aotearoa, New Zealand, as it's so commonly called. Anyone here who now starts calling that country that is using a Maori word, Aotearoa, New Zealand, and they're very famous for their kahanga reo, which are language nests. So they pioneered a kind of preschool where imagine nursery. But you send your kid and the only teachers are all elders fluent in Maori. So what happens is the same thing has happened with Welsh. The biggest group of Welsh speakers right now are children. And this is the sign of not only a lively language, but a language in resurgence. Because what's happened now is there are some missed generations. That's happened with Maori, it's happened with Welsh. We now have examples where children are far better speakers of heritage languages than their parents. I don't know if there are. I really hope that there are parent programs because I can imagine if I was a parent in that position, I would want to get involved. But there are many, many examples. Hebrew is an incredibly famous example. Hebrew is now the sole language of the nation state of Israel. That status changed in 2019, where Arabic still held the same status. It has since had its status diminished for political reasons, not because people aren't speaking Arabic there. And in Mandatory Palestine, English was also an official language alongside those two languages. But a couple of hundred years ago, there actually wasn't a speaker of Hebrew. It was not a vernacular spoken language. It had been. It had fallen out of daily use and it had become sacralized, used primarily in religious contexts.

[Event Moderator]

A bit like Latin, right?

[Sophia Smith Gaylor]

A bit like. Yeah, a bit. We bring Latin back.

[Event Moderator]

Is that going to come back?

[Sophia Smith Gaylor]

Who wants to bring Latin?

[Event Moderator]

I would quite like to bring Latin back.

[Sophia Smith Gaylor]

Yeah. Well, Latin. Latin is here. You know Latin.

[Event Moderator]

If you were going to speak Latin, what accent would you use?

[Sophia Smith Gaylor]

Italian. But it doesn't make that school.

[Event Moderator]

We never did that. It was never kind of.

[Sophia Smith Gaylor]

You don't survive, really. You sort of read it to understand it and you do literary translations, but you wouldn't have to read it. But the really interesting about Latin is. So Pope Francis changed the. There's a Theologian in the audience, they'll tell me I'm wrong. But he did something like he changed the Tridentine Mass. It's got a name like that or something. And he. The outcome is that he tried to make it so that you would hear more of your local language in Mass than Latin. Do you know who got really mad about that? Rory Stewart. Loads of kind of quite random British personalities. There was quite a lot of pushback against it, though.

[Audience Member 2]

Yeah.

[Sophia Smith Gaylor]

Got really mad about it here in the uk. I'm confident a lot of them are not practicing Catholics, but they got mad about it because it was seen as an affront to an important cultural heritage. And I thought when I saw that, isn't that interesting? These individuals who feel this connection to Latin, to not even, you know, Latin in one very particular context, would they show up for this? Would they show up like this for the UK's living but threatened languages?

[Event Moderator]

No.

[Sophia Smith Gaylor]

Yeah. Just an interesting observation I made while writing this book.

[Event Moderator]

Now I'm going to give you, the audience, the chance to ask Sophia some questions. I'm sure you have many that you would like answered.

[Sophia Smith Gaylor]

Hello.

[Audience Member 3]

Thank you.

[Event Moderator]

Hello.

[Audience Member 3]

And die of. I am Irish. My friend next to me is Irish as well. Neither of us were raised with Irish in the house and we're at very different levels of trying to learn ga. You're doing very well and I'm going very quickly. I wanted to ask you about, through the research that you've done, there's a gap for me living in London, and I wondered if you found places that are filling this gap. So that's my question, but I'll explain it better. So I've just come back from a Gaeltacht area where I was able to go into a shop.

[Sophia Smith Gaylor]

Can you explain what geeltacht is to people who may not know it in the audience?

[Audience Member 3]

It's a slightly unusual term because we call, like several different areas the geeltocht, but it just means any part of Ireland where Irish is the first language. Children are being raised in it. It's basically as far from England as possible, where the colonization didn't quite reach the corners of the country, but we

[Audience Member 1]

call it all the Geltokt.

[Audience Member 3]

So I've just come back from a GEELTAG and literally 20 minutes after that experience finished, even within my own country, I could no longer go into a shop, order in Irish, say please. Thank you. Sorry if I bumped into someone and then I obviously got all the way back here where I live and I feel like, as you say, like those are the kinds of things that really, really make it alive for you. And I feel like there are languages in London where, like, if I spoke Arabic, there are restaurants where I could just be an Arabic speaker, there are shops where I could be an Arabic speaker. But with Gwelga, I just don't see that. And we have organized events, but we don't have, like, there's no planning here for Gwelga. But like, we're the most diaspora. I think we're the biggest diaspora of all countries ever.

[Audience Member 2]

Maybe.

[Audience Member 3]

But I might be wrong. Huge amount of Irish people don't live in Ireland. So I wonder if you found a place where people have managed to do that outside of the country, which is the language's place.

[Sophia Smith Gaylor]

So I can. Let me give you a bit of insight into what I have been a part of. So every month I run an Italian language bar where people. You might have seen a video I made about it recently. But I lure people in with three pound wine. You know, where can you get a glass of three pound wine in London? But the. This bar is hosted by a community center where I recorded our podcast and it was started in the 60s. And that club will not exist anymore if there aren't volunteers willing to basically run events and keep it alive. So I wanted to do the language bar, both to revive my Italian, help other heritage speakers in my position, but then like new Italian migrants who would just want to keep speaking their language and meeting other Italians, Italian graduates or students. And I'm not paid to do that. I do it because I love doing it. It's important for me to do it. So it's back to that grassroots thing that I mentioned, that a lot of this work is basically just being done by very keen volunteers. If there aren't the very keen volunteers, I think that's, that's obviously I. I struggle to understand where it would come from otherwise, because I think even if the Irish government suddenly started something, funding something, there needs to be interest, you know, there needs to be both supply and demand. But I'd be curious about whether there is any support that could come from Ireland or even the eu, given it's an EU language.

[Event Moderator]

Any more questions?

[Audience Member 4]

I know you mentioned like Maori earlier, but is there any other languages that you like either started researching or you'd like want to research more if you were to write another book like this?

[Sophia Smith Gaylor]

I would want to do all the languages in the uk. I think that would be really cool. I don't know. It's hard. There are loads, but I almost can't imagine anyone sort of giving me the option. But if they did, I'd kind of just. I'd be like a kid in a toy shop, sort of not really knowing where to go. But, yes, I didn't go to Spain. And Spain obviously has very, very interesting history and very good. It's interesting. Spain still has some languages that are very heavily threatened and have not had recognition that languages like Catalan and Bascav. So it's not a perfect picture, but it's certainly a more successful picture than its neighbors. And I would really like to sort of analyze why that would be cool. Yes. Don't tempt me with a good time.

[Event Moderator]

Any more questions, gentlemen at the front?

[Audience Member 5]

So, I mean, first of all, I'd just like to say, actually a big thank you for your book. I can't tell you and slightly explain why I'm founder of a language app, which one or two you may have heard of. I don't know where people say, you like Duolingo or Babel or anything like that. And I see you quote Babbel in your book. I'm looking forward to you quoting us. We have an app called Utalk and what's music to my ears is listening to today. Because when we started, we were just going to do English. It was 35 years ago when it was CD ROMs and people kept on telling us we should do this language and that language. The app now has 160 languages on it that you can learn. It's spoken language. We don't do reading, we don't do writing as such. We don't do grammar. But the idea is to help people speak. And yes, we do do Mori, we do do Quechua, we do do all of the languages of the British Isles, apart from one which is genusier from Guernsey. That's to come. But I think you won't find any other that we haven't covered. We do do Ladino. And so it's a big thank you. But it's also a sanity check that I'm almost asking you for. People have said to us, you're mad. Completely, completely bonkers. When are you going to stop? And we made a decision in the company about three or four months ago that far from stopping, we'd like to do the opposite. So how many languages are you going to do?

[Sophia Smith Gaylor]

We want to do the lot, but it's important work. Does anyone here use Memrise or has used Memrise?

[Audience Member 5]

Yeah, we know about MEM too. Yeah, sorry.

[Sophia Smith Gaylor]

Yeah. So Memrise, just as an example. Loads of speakers have endangered languages had been using memrise. And then they changed something about the sort of infrastructure of their website, which suddenly meant that they shut down every single. They shut down one of their products and with it, all of these resources that speakers had been assembling for ages suddenly lost them. And the outcry was apparent before they did it and that that company did have a decision. They could have paused it, they didn't.

[Audience Member 5]

I mean, we understand this because we've been doing. When we add a language, we don't just add it as a language you can speak, we had it as a language you can learn from. So now we're up to 24,000.

[Event Moderator]

So do you have a question for Sophia?

[Sophia Smith Gaylor]

Yeah.

[Audience Member 5]

Yes, sorry. My question was very, very simple. Are we completely mad to say that we would like to go and do all six and a half thousand languages? And secondly, the way we want to do it is I don't think any one government's going to help with most of those languages and therefore, if it's going to be people. So we're looking probably to crowdfund it in a way.

[Sophia Smith Gaylor]

Well, thank you for your question. It's interesting, the point about is there like an international organization that would rally around it in almost every arena? There isn't an international body. So in the chapter where I look

[Mia Sorrenti]

at

[Sophia Smith Gaylor]

Ukrainian, the Kurdish chapter as well, but with Ukrainian, you've got the state language commissioner there who is gathering all of the examples of lingocide, because they hope to use and reference these examples. When it comes to genocide, the charge over genocide, there is no. It sounds like linguicide is a crime. There is no international crime of linguicide. Linguistic human rights get wrapped up in loads of different areas. And even when it comes to think about our own human rights protection here in the uk, your language is not a protected characteristic. You would sort of have to. If you feared someone was sort of persecuting you on the basis of your language, you'd have to try and get it. You know, a lawyer would tell you better than me, but I think they'd have to try and get it under your national origin. You know, they'd have to find a different means with which to define your discrimination. In France, newly, they actually have a law, glottophobia. We do not have this law in the uk. In France, they have it in other places. Increasingly they may. So if you don't even have international human rights monitors looking at these kinds of things, UNESCO really are the only sort of international place that looks at this kind of stuff. And that's why apps like the one that you've just heard about this evening are often going to be reliant on. On crowdfunding efforts and grassroots efforts. I don't think you're mad. I think that it's going to be really challenging and will you have enough resources and speakers to give you the information that you need? But I certainly think every. Wouldn't it be lovely every time someone comes to you with a language that they need, that there is the infrastructure to try and offer something? I think that is, everyone I'm sure here would agree that's admirable.

[Event Moderator]

Please go ahead.

[Audience Member 4]

My name is Solomon and I'm currently studying linguistics for my undergraduate degree. I've read bits and bobs of your book. So your introductory sections and like the last section about Emilien, your heritage language. I'm really touched, especially by the moments that you describe. You talking and doing fieldwork with your nonna and mum and at least from your descriptions, well, it's probably safe to say that you are a heritage speaker of Emilian. Is that correct?

[Sophia Smith Gaylor]

I don't speak it. I understand it.

[Audience Member 4]

I said like, I think, like, that is, you know, at least in some definitions, you might also be counted as a heritage speaker.

[Sophia Smith Gaylor]

You're right, I would be. That was me knocking myself. I shouldn't have done that. Thank you.

[Audience Member 4]

I mean, yeah, I myself, I'm also a heritage speaker of a variety of a Chinese language. And there's many Chinese languages in China.

[Sophia Smith Gaylor]

What's it called?

[Audience Member 4]

It's called. So that Chinese language is called Gan. And the variety is from the. From the sort of township of Hukou. So it's that area's variety. It still has kind of, you know, intergenerational transmission, but it's kind of fading. Okay, so I can still speak some. I can understand perfectly what my family is saying, but like, yeah, kind of heritage speaker and kind of situation.

[Sophia Smith Gaylor]

Do you have a question?

[Audience Member 4]

I do, I do. That's my background. My question's about the shame surrounding being a heritage language speaker. Did you ever experience a feeling of shame about speaking or like understanding everything that is said in the language, but unable to speak more fluently than you have hoped? So that kind of being a heritage speaker, and if you did experience that, let's say with Emiliane, how did you deal with it?

[Sophia Smith Gaylor]

Yes, absolutely. I say a lot. Shame is one of the biggest language killers. And the reason it's so harmful is because you don't always need another person to give it to you. We're very good at making ourselves Feel ashamed with very little external effort. Interestingly, in the chapter that I have on shame, a Peruvian linguist called it asphyxia linguistica. Linguistic asphyxiation. And I think any of us who's been put in that position can suddenly feel that very viscerally with that kind of term. And I am of the opinion and I think writing this book has emboldened this opinion for me. The best language learners in the world are not good at languages. They're shameless. So anyone here who has learned any kind of language. Are you scared you're going to make a mistake? Do you think you're going to make a mistake? If your answer is of course I'm going to make a mistake, how do you think I'm going to learn? Oh, all right. You just, you drop that shame, you realize actually what good or use does that shame have? Nothing doesn't do anything. So I think you almost need to build up this sense of linguistic self esteem and I get really annoyed. My Italian has definitely been improving. I can hear especially when I record myself speaking Italian. Now I might hear myself say certain things like oh Sofia, you know, it's your accent was re English there or your accent was really Spanish there. Which sometimes happens, you know, sometimes I hear these things and I remain very self critical. But I hate it when I am with someone and someone else makes a comment to them and I think it is only intended as linguistic shaming. And often the speaker doesn't even realize that this is what they're doing, but they're making a remark about the way that the person is speaking. And depending on the context I now call that behavior out. So I've not only become shameless in my own ability to make mistakes, I will not become better at the languages I speak if I don't make errors. In fact, the rules for my Italian language bar are parlare in Italiano, speak Italian, spagliare, make mistakes, ebere drink. Those are the three rules and I think they are applicable beyond the Italian language bar. So be shameless. If you needed someone to give you permission to be shameless, here I am.

[Event Moderator]

Fantastic. Fantastic. Any more questions? Are there plenty? Yes, this lady here in the front.

[Audience Member 1]

I was wondering whether in some animators are a linguistic segregation or fake bilingualism. I'll give you an example. I'm Belgian myself. I'm Russell. The cap was to be existing binaural but in fact that's entirely not the cake and it has quite a large impact on me. So the perceptual capsule and the community around it. I'm wondering if you had any thoughts on that or any research that sort of. You've read on that.

[Sophia Smith Gaylor]

Specifically, a context like that, from memory didn't appear in the book. The only thing I can think of that came up was bilingual education and the egg. So if you just sort of skim read language planning in Ecdor, you'd be incredibly impressed with it. And in many, in many ways we should be about what's been achieved there. But when you look at the quality of bilingual education and how basically the intention was that in theory it was a great idea. In practice, if not enough resources are actually given towards bilingual education, no surprise it may not work. So it's not about the idea not working, it's about the resources granted to it. So I can't say that I had that, but it's a. Very. Obviously, it's an absolutely fascinating concept.

[Audience Member 1]

Just to give you an example. So I'm a native Flemish and Italian speaker. My parents are from each side, but I've learned French, German, English at school.

[Audience Member 3]

But when I.

[Audience Member 1]

When I go to the embassy here in Belgium, nobody is able to help me in Flemish because. And it's just. I mean, I just don't know how to explain it. It's ridiculous. I mean, we're 6 million speakers of Flemish, we're 4 million speakers of French in Belgium.

[Sophia Smith Gaylor]

Do they need on their CVs to get a job there? Do they need on their CVs to say that they speak Flemish?

[Audience Member 1]

I don't think so, no. Because they hire local English speakers who will have French. So for the Belgians, it's. But it really kind of creates a big animosity within the community. I have so many friends that work in Brussels but refuse to live in Brussels because there's just no representation of the Flemish community. Although in the institutions there should be Flemish, French and also German. So I'm just wondering.

[Sophia Smith Gaylor]

Yeah, if you're describing language planning, top down language planning, that is not being that speakers living in that country do not feel is representing them. And that's the beginning of numerous problems down the line. Lady.

[Mia Sorrenti]

Next.

[Event Moderator]

You had a question as well. Hi.

[Audience Member 2]

It was really touching to read chapter one. In conversation with Marwina. I think it was the Polish linguist. And when a nurse had told her not to speak Polish for the children, it actually happened in my family. So my father's Dutch and my mother's English and my older brother was diagnosed with dyslexia, dyscalculia, just a range of different learning disabilities. And when he Went to the psychologist, she recommended that we only speak one language in our household, and that was English, because my mother doesn't speak Dutch. And at the time I was about three, and so that was a complete severing of language. And I could speak Dutch when I was little and obviously not anymore because my parents took that advice. And so we only spoke English. And I just thought it was very interesting how void language health is even in healthcare, in psychology. I mean, it's not really a question, but I don't know, I think how important is it that language health be integrated into psychology, especially child psychology? And even. I don't even know if you know. But is that even true, what the psychologist had said to my parents? Is that true that it would have been easier for my older brother to just speak one language?

[Sophia Smith Gaylor]

I am not a psychologist and I can't answer that. I can tell you that it is commonly described as misinformation by linguists when they hear about children being told to only speak one language. That's not the advice that children broadly should be given. They should be encouraged to maintain whatever languages are important to them and their families. But certainly here, what do you think? Do you think culturally we live in a country where people's multilingualism is valued the way it should be? I don't think so. And I argue. I mean, we've just gone through a political cycle, you know, that the Conservatives tried to ban foreign languages in election campaigning very recently. The Labour government shot it down at committee stage, but that nearly. That got tabled and could have gone through in a more, you know, divisive political time. So we. We do live in quite a hostile environment for languages. We have pop. We have politicians who go on air and are happy to say that when I'm on a train and I hear people speaking, you know, I'm on a train for several stations, I can't speak English. That politician, you know who I'm thinking of? I don't want to say his name.

[Podcast Host]

He.

[Sophia Smith Gaylor]

He's not there. Thinking this could be a mother and daughter keeping their mother tongue alive. It's not their thinking of anything like that.

[Event Moderator]

Any more questions? Well, loads of questions. We only have four minutes left, so

[Sophia Smith Gaylor]

make your question very quick. Make my questions quick.

[Event Moderator]

Gentleman in the white shirt. Yes, that one who's got his hand still up, wait for your microphone.

[Sophia Smith Gaylor]

Fantastic.

[Event Moderator]

Thank you.

[Audience Member 5]

So there's a famous saying that, I'm sure you're familiar with, that languages, as a dialect of the army in the

[Sophia Smith Gaylor]

navy, you're gonna Say that.

[Audience Member 5]

So based on that, I'm just curious whether you think, given how political a definition of a language is, whether you would consider. Consider that linguicide of certain dialects being subsumed into languages just by, you know, nationalist movements, political movements, et cetera. And how do you account for that in terms of preserving, revitalizing, reviving? And what do you think should be done about that?

[Sophia Smith Gaylor]

It happens a lot that languages are described as dialects with the means to sort of devalue them and not include them in areas of public life. Or more often than not, it's actually about not giving their speakers power or not giving the identity of those speakers a different power to the rest of the group, especially in these worldviews. One language, one nation, nationalist worldviews.

[Event Moderator]

I think we have time for one more question. So the lady there. This one? Yep, this one. And if you do have any other questions, there will be an opportunity to meet Sophia to sign a book just outside. So you can put some questions to it then as well. Please go ahead. Hi. Thank you.

[Sophia Smith Gaylor]

My question is about the trajectory of Arabic and the different dialects. So I've heard that it's generally been compared to Latin and how it's kind

[Event Moderator]

of been separated into these different languages

[Sophia Smith Gaylor]

and then Latin eventually died, essentially. Do you think Arabic might be in that. Going in that same direction or, you

[Audience Member 2]

know, with how large the Arabic population is and the. And media and social media and all

[Event Moderator]

of that, would it.

[Audience Member 2]

Like, how would you predict that going?

[Sophia Smith Gaylor]

It's not only in linguistics. In London schools, I am mapping London's languages at the moment. In London schools, there is not one Arabic. Arabic is recorded differently. It's not every single country. But off the top of my head I can remember Sudan is one. Iraq sort of. Certain countries are identified. Levantine, you know, sort of generally described. And then there's like Arabic brackets. Any other. So any that don't fit into the brackets get lumped in. A number of languages in the data set are like that, including Chinese, when they're all. Yeah, don't get me started on cleaning up local boroughs language data. It's a nightmare. But it's one of my hobbies at the moment. The what's. I understand this a bit more intimately because I've been an Arabic learner and speaker. And the. I would argue that trying to learn Levitine compared to modern standard did feel like learning two different yet overlapping languages. And then linguists sort of come to their. To their own conclusions, certainly from online commentary that I've seen. Interestingly, there's very divided opinion on it. Some people contest that because they associate it with a means to divide the Arab world. If we say that it is split by many languages, it's, it's this one, one language, one nation idea. Returning in other instances, Certainly as a learner, it was very important to me that I was given opportunities to learn both because I would not have been able to learn one without the other, interestingly. Right.

[Event Moderator]

Well, I'm so sorry, but we have run out of time for this evening's Q and A with Sophia. I want to thank Sophia for such an insightful and amazing speech. Thank you.

[Sophia Smith Gaylor]

So copies of the book how to

[Event Moderator]

Kill a Language are available by our sold by our booksellers out there and Sophia will be signing books. A very big thank you also to Intelligence Squared for organizing this evening. And thank you to all of you for your fantastic questions. Thank you.

[Sophia Smith Gaylor]

Thank you.

[Event Moderator]

Bye bye.

[Mia Sorrenti]

Thanks for listening to Intelligence Squared. This episode was produced by me, Mia Sorrenti and it was edited by Mark Roberts for ad free episodes and full length recordings. You can become a [e-mail] membership. If you'd like to join us at future live events, you can find our full program and buy tickets [e-mail] attend. You've been listening to Intelligence Squared. Thanks for joining us.