Ross Perlin
Biography
Ross Perlin is co-director of the Endangered Language Alliance (ELA), a non-profit research institute focused on documenting and supporting endangered languages in New York City and beyond. At ELA since 2013, he directed the creation of the Languages of New York City map (www.languagemap.nyc) and has managed a variety of projects focused on language documentation, language policy, and public programming around urban linguistic diversity. Himalayan languages are a research focus — for his PhD in Linguistics at the University of Bern, Ross created a trilingual dictionary, a corpus of recordings, and a descriptive grammar of Trung, an endangered language of southwest China, based on several years of fieldwork. Ross has a BA from Stanford, an M.Phil. from Cambridge, and an MA from the University of London (SOAS). Ross is also a writer and translator, whose work has appeared in the New York Times, The Guardian, Harper's, The Atlantic, and elsewhere. His most recent book is Language City: The Fight to Preserve Endangered Mother Tongues in New York, published in 2024 by Grove.