Of the 7,000 languages in the world, nearly half will be gone by the end of this century. When two self-confessed scholarly nerds set out to capture this dying bounty of the human vernacular, they encounter firsthand the very forces aligned against languages: institutionalized racism, cultural clashes and economic unrest. The two linguists—David Harrison and Gregory Anderson—travel to Siberia, India and Bolivia, searching for the last speakers of native tongues and find all sorts of misadventures along the way. They will attend Mountainfilm and be happy to teach you Kallawaya or any number of other languages.
—Mary Duffy