Featured Story
Language City
A portrait of contemporary New York City, the most linguistically diverse city in history, through six speakers of little-known and overlooked languages
Forging a Future for Languages
Founded in 2010, the Endangered Language Alliance (ELA) is a non-profit dedicated to documenting Indigenous, minority, and endangered languages, supporting linguistic diversity in New York City and beyond.
Featured Language
Seke
One of an estimated 140 indigenous languages of Nepal, Seke is mainly spoken in the five villages in the Upper Mustang district, near the Tibetan border—as well as in the cities of Pokhara, Kathmandu, and New York.
ELA at a Glance
10 Projects
With ten current larger-scale projects and additional work on individual languages, ELA focuses on communities and individuals in the New York City area.
42 Languages
ELA has worked to different degrees on numerous projects with speakers of over a hundred languages spoken in New York City and beyond. More in-depth work continues on the several dozen featured here.
1 Mission
ELA's network is an extended family of linguists, language activists, community leaders, students, volunteers, and lovers of language in NYC and the world over.
Introducing ELA
Recent Updates
ELA in the NY Times
In “The World Capital of Endangered Languages”, New York Times journalist Alex Carp follows ELA’s work documenting and mapping endangered languages in New York and beyond. Citing LANGUAGE CITY—the new book about the city’s languages and ELA’s work by co-director Ross Perlin—the piece also features (literally) moving portraits of speakers of a dozen languages from…
LANGUAGE CITY events
Free upcoming NYC and virtual events for LANGUAGE CITY, the story of NYC’s linguistic diversity and ELA’s work—with more to come! Tuesday 2/20, 7 pm: Strand Bookstore (Manhattan) w/Thomas Dyja (SOLD OUT) Wednesday 2/28, 6:30 pm: Gotham Center for NYC History (virtual) w/Nancy Foner (SOLD OUT) Sunday 3/3, 7:30 pm: Topos Too (Queens) w/Maru Ponce Wednesday…