"Silent treatment" kills a language

[Jashan]

There are only two fluent speakers of the Ayapaneco language in Mexico who are still alive. However, language conservation efforts are hitting a massive -- and unusual -- roadblock: Manuel Segovia (75) and Isidro Velazquezto (69) refuse to talk to each other.

Article here

[roninbodhisattva]

Oh good lord.

[masako]

You beat me to it...

I heard about this on my way into work this morning.

[Legion]

Wait why is this news? This story has been around for years.

Edit: also, if there are only two speakers left of a language, it is already technically dead, whether they talk to each other or not.

[finlay]

Wait why is this news? This story has been around for years.

Edit: also, if there are only two speakers left of a language, it is already technically dead, whether they talk to each other or not.

A language is dead once it's not being passed on to children anymore, though, so technically you could have a language with 2 speakers that isn't quite moribund because it's about to passed on to a couple's children or something. Of course, the rule kind of only applies to small numbers that are greater than that because i can't really think of a situation where it would apply and i'm just being facetious....

[zompist]

A bit more accurately, if there's just two elderly speakers, the language is moribund. Lakoff gives interesting details about Dyirbal in Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things; the main point is that linguistic details start getting lost well before the language disappears. Those old dudes probably speak a rather debased form of Ayapaneco.

[Xephyr]

Daniel Suslak, an Indiana University linguistic anthropologist, is compiling a dictionary to record the existence of the language.

Anyone else get a kick out of the wording here? Yeah, I think we've already pretty well established the language's EXISTENCE... what Daniel Suslak (and other field linguists) are doing is something else.

Unless...

"After three years of living with the Ayapaneco and learning and meticulously documenting their language, I have at last sufficiently demonstrated, in my estimation, that the Ayapaneco language does, in fact, exist." -- Daniel Suslak's PhD thesis

[Salmoneus]

Better thesis:
"After thirteen years of living with the Ayapaneco and learning and meticulously documenting their language, I have at last sufficiently demonstrated, in my estimation, that the Ayapaneco language DID, in fact, exist." -- Daniel Suslak's PhD

[WechtleinUns]

Don't worry. Make a conlang about it.

[sirred]

Couldn't they just bite the bullet and just write down all the different ways to say, "I'm not talking to that son of a bitch."?

[Skittles]

It would be so cool if they did that!!

[The Count]

Greed knows no boundaries! Why don't they just pay those old farts and I'll bet they talk? Pay them even more and chances are they even make babies.