by Tim Johnson
AYAPAN, Mexico -- Only two people on Earth are known to speak the Ayapanec language, Manuel Segovia and Isidro Velasquez, old men of few words who are somewhat indifferent to each other's company.
When Segovia and Velasquez pass away, their language also will go to the grave. It will mark the demise of a unique way of describing the lush landscape of southern Mexico and thinking about the world.
Ayapanec isn't alone in its vulnerability. Some linguists say that languages are disappearing at the rate of two a month. Half of the world's remaining 7,000 or so languages may be gone by the end of this century, pushed into disuse by English, Spanish and other dominating languages.
The die-off has parallels to the extinction of animals. The death of a language, linguists say, robs humanity of ideas, belief systems and knowledge of the natural world. Languages are repositories of human experience that have evolved over centuries, even millennia.
"Languages are definitely more endangered than species and are going extinct at a faster rate," said K. David Harrison, a linguist at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania and the author of the book "When Languages Die." "There are many hundreds of languages that have fewer than 50 speakers."
Hot spots for endangered languages may not be where you think. They include places such as Oklahoma, which holds the highest density of indigenous languages in the United States, partly because faraway tribes were forcibly relocated there in the 1800s; northern Australia, home to many small and scattered Aboriginal groups; and Central Siberia, which has 25 Turkic, Mongolic and other languages that face extinction.
In Mexico's Tabasco state, which faces the Gulf of Mexico, several languages and their dialects are in agony. Less than 2 miles northwest of the town of Ayapan is Cupilco, home to a handful of elderly residents who still speak a dialect of Nahuatl, the language of the ancient Aztecs. Linguists call the dialect "moribund" because no children speak it.
Silence Looms
When Ayapanec and Cupilco Nahuatl die, bridges will not fall down. Ecosystems will not be disrupted. Few may notice. Language is an invisible triumph of humanity and its disappearance brings only silence.
"It's not as flashy as a pyramid but it represents enormous human achievement in terms of the thought and effort that went into it," said Daniel Suslak, a linguistic anthropologist at Indiana University who's about to publish a dictionary and grammar of Ayapanec.
Read more:
AYAPAN, Mexico -- Only two people on Earth are known to speak the Ayapanec language, Manuel Segovia and Isidro Velasquez, old men of few words who are somewhat indifferent to each other's company.
When Segovia and Velasquez pass away, their language also will go to the grave. It will mark the demise of a unique way of describing the lush landscape of southern Mexico and thinking about the world.
Ayapanec isn't alone in its vulnerability. Some linguists say that languages are disappearing at the rate of two a month. Half of the world's remaining 7,000 or so languages may be gone by the end of this century, pushed into disuse by English, Spanish and other dominating languages.The die-off has parallels to the extinction of animals. The death of a language, linguists say, robs humanity of ideas, belief systems and knowledge of the natural world. Languages are repositories of human experience that have evolved over centuries, even millennia.
"Languages are definitely more endangered than species and are going extinct at a faster rate," said K. David Harrison, a linguist at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania and the author of the book "When Languages Die." "There are many hundreds of languages that have fewer than 50 speakers."
Hot spots for endangered languages may not be where you think. They include places such as Oklahoma, which holds the highest density of indigenous languages in the United States, partly because faraway tribes were forcibly relocated there in the 1800s; northern Australia, home to many small and scattered Aboriginal groups; and Central Siberia, which has 25 Turkic, Mongolic and other languages that face extinction.
In Mexico's Tabasco state, which faces the Gulf of Mexico, several languages and their dialects are in agony. Less than 2 miles northwest of the town of Ayapan is Cupilco, home to a handful of elderly residents who still speak a dialect of Nahuatl, the language of the ancient Aztecs. Linguists call the dialect "moribund" because no children speak it.
Silence Looms
When Ayapanec and Cupilco Nahuatl die, bridges will not fall down. Ecosystems will not be disrupted. Few may notice. Language is an invisible triumph of humanity and its disappearance brings only silence.
"It's not as flashy as a pyramid but it represents enormous human achievement in terms of the thought and effort that went into it," said Daniel Suslak, a linguistic anthropologist at Indiana University who's about to publish a dictionary and grammar of Ayapanec.
Read more:
