Indian Gen Z can’t read their mother tongues—and parents are proud. How English prestige, class anxiety, and hierarchy hollowed out culture. Read on.

Bringing with them the languages of their homelands, immigrants newly arrived by ship at Ellis Island await official processing and approval to reach their destination—New York City, already in sight.

In 1884 the anthropologist Franz Boas returned from Baffin Island with a discovery that would kick off decades of linguistic wrangling: by his count, the local Inuit language had four words for snow, ...