What is the future of linguistic diversity in America? Today it is more uncertain than ever.
This land is home to hundreds of Native languages and has received hundreds more through immigration—nowhere more so than in ELA’s home of New York City—but very few of those languages are assured a future here.
Language shift and loss are pervasive, due to enormous pressures. English, the lingua franca, is on the edge of becoming something more: not just a de facto requirement, but a de jure one that sweeps everything in its path. Language is now an issue on the frontlines of politics. ELA is a linguistic organization—an alliance of all those who love language and languages. While the forces that have led to the present moment are many and complicated, the freedom to use a mother tongue is simple. Our commitment to endangered languages and those who use them is unwavering. Linguistic diversity enriches all of us, in every way.
The new administration has made clear its intention to deport millions of immigrants and to close down the country, cutting us off from the world’s peoples, languages, and cultures that have made us what we are: the greatest social experiment in history.
Our mission now is to protect and document this embattled experiment, educating the broader public and connecting communities across uncomfortable barriers, linguistic and otherwise. However hard it gets, we ask you to keep reading and listening and supporting the work.