Language Extinction

Michael Rosen talks to Sophia Smith Galer about the languages we're losing. She's found that by the end of this century half of the world’s 7000 languages will be gone, and she's travelled across the world to meet both the people who are experiencing this and those who are fighting to keep the words and the knowledge they hold alive. Sophia Smith Galer is the author of How to Kill a Language: Power, Resistance and the Race to Save Our Words. Produced for BBC Audio Bristol by Beth O'Dea, in partnership with the Open University.

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Language Extinction is an episode from Word of Mouth by BBC.

This episode is 27:42 long.

This episode was published on Feb 19, 2026.

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