As 2025 ticks out its final hours, here’s one last episode of ALILI for the year, and it’s buonissimo! Journalist, author, content creator and linguist Sophia Smith Galer joins me to share the love for Italian. Our conversation has a focus on the sociolinguistic dynamics of Italian, namely how this national language fits into the lives of speakers up and down the peninsula, and how it might be harming the other languages of Italy in the process. Sophia also shares her personal relationship with Italian, as a ‘heritage language’ of hers that she is now working to promote in London.

Support the language-loving mission by joining the ALILI Patreon here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠patreon.com/ALanguageILoveIs⁠⁠

Sophia’s splendid website: ⁠https://www.sophiasmithgaler.com/⁠

Pre-order How to Kill a Language here: ⁠https://www.sophiasmithgaler.com/how-to-kill-a-language⁠

Sample of Italian (by speaker Sebastiano) from here: ⁠https://wikitongues.org/videos/sebastiano_20131103_ita/⁠

Host: Dr. Danny Bate

Guest: Sophia Smith Galer

Audio Mixing and Mastering: Jeremiah McPadden

Music: Acoustic Guitar by William King

Artwork: Willow Marler

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