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“As languages throughout the world continue to disappear at an alarming rate, James Griffiths' book could not be more relevant.”


— David Moser, author, A Billion Voices: China's Search for a Common Language.

A New Yorker Best Book of 2022

Chinese (繁體) translation available from Cite Publishing: 請說「國語」：看語言的瀕危與復興，如何左右身分認同、文化與強權的「統一」敘事

Buy the English language paperback now through Bloomsbury, Bookshop.org, or Amazon, or order directly through your local book store with ISBN# 9781786999689.

Colonialism and globalization have devastated the world’s linguistic diversity, with more and more languages going extinct every year. Even as the science of language acquisition advances and the internet brings us new ways of teaching the next generation, it is becoming increasingly challenging for minority languages to survive in the face of a handful of hegemonic ‘super-tongues’.

In Speak Not, James Griffiths reports from the frontlines of the battle to preserve minority languages, from his native Wales, to Hawai’i, Tibet, southern China and Hong Kong. He explores the revival of the Welsh language as a blueprint for how to ensure new generations are not robbed of their linguistic heritage, outlines how loss of indigenous languages is the direct result government policies both bast and present, and examines how technology is both hindering and aiding the fight to prevent linguistic extinction.

Introducing readers to compelling characters and examining how indigenous communities are fighting for their languages, Griffiths ultimately explores how languages hang on, what happens when they don’t, and how indigenous tongues can be preserved and brought back from the brink.

Published by Zed Books/Bloomsbury on October 21, 2021.

For media inquiries, please email Mollie Broad at Zed/Bloomsbury, or contact James Griffiths directly.

“Speak Not is a beautifully narrated and intensely smart global history of how languages are destroyed.”
— Gina Anne Tam, author Dialect and Nationalism in China, 1860-1960

Reviews

The New Yorker: ‘This history of endangered languages assesses the political causes of their precariousness.’

Los Angeles Review of Books: ‘Speak Not is an astute, well-researched, and often scholarly meditation on the forces that drive marginal languages out of existence in favor of dominant metropolitan tongues.’

The Globe and Mail: ‘Speak Not … is a welcome addition to critiques of empire and studies of language policy and politics. Part history, part memoir, part policy critique, the volume succeeds at telling a universal tale through particular stories, including characters who remind us that the languages we speak –and speak not – are the worlds in which we live, and that such worlds are worth fighting for.’

International Affairs: ‘James Griffiths aptly demonstrates how the loss of linguistic diversity is rooted in imperial and gatekeeping efforts to differentiate and silence societies on the margins of empire.’

Korea Times: ‘Through his new book, Griffiths proves himself to be a talented storyteller. The topic he chose to discuss may not sound intriguing to everyone at first, due to its specialized nature. But once readers become open-minded enough to pick it up and turn the pages one after the other, they'll find the book to be hard to put down.’

South China Morning Post Magazine: ‘These warnings from the past should be carefully heeded, Griffiths comments. “Cantonese is facing rough decades ahead,” he concludes. “Its speakers may find themselves fighting for the survival of their language sooner than they expect”.’

Nation.Cymru: ‘Speak Not is a lucid and timely account of languages under threat around the world … Griffiths underlines the value of a language well beyond its being a tool of communication – as a component of linguistic diversity, as a carrier of ideas, invention and poetry not to mention identity.’

Asian Review of Books: ‘Griffiths is spot on: the survival of many languages—and perhaps the identities that go with them—depends on politics.’

Buzz Magazine: ‘Speak Not teases out both differences and similarities between [Griffiths’] examples, be that in the racial dimension or level of state violence in their oppression, with both sensitivity and passion.’

Irish Tech News: ‘[Griffiths demonstrates] how important indigenous language is to local culture and unique insights into the world. We are much poorer with every language that dies out, therefore it is all the more tragic when this happens as the result of deliberate government policies and actions.’