The Last Man on Earth To Speak His Language (axios.com)

From a report: An elderly man in Peru named Amadeo Garcia Garcia is the last person on earth to speak his native language, Taushiro, the NY Times' Nicholas Casey reports in a remarkable long-read. A combination of disease and exploitation have led the Taushiro, a tribe of hunter-gatherers in the Amazon, to the verge of extinction. In the last century, at least 37 languages have disappeared in Peru alone, lost in the steady clash and churn of national expansion, migration, urbanization and the pursuit of natural resources.

Comments

Not really bad.

[Gravis Zero]

Of the things that are going extinct, speakers of a particular language are not of great concern. Some people may see it as a tragedy but we aren't really losing much of anything. It's more romanticism over something interesting more than anything else.

Re:Not really bad.

[Quirkz]

I'll admit I don't feel much twinge about losing a language. Now, cultures dying out, maybe, and associated stories and traditions, definitely, I can see how there's some value being lost. But at some level I feel like more languages just leads to more confusion, and the fewer of them we have, the more likely it is we'll understand each other.

Spoken vs Written

[WoodstockJeff]

If a spoken language "goes extinct", if there was no written language that accompanied it, the main "problem" would be, "how would I be fluent enough to communicate with these people when I use my time machine to visit them when they spoke language X?"

The written language, and the history written in it, that is a bit more of a problem for future of that culture. Assuming there are written histories, working with this "last native speaker" to build a base for translation would be a good idea.

Re:Rushing to pre-pay 2018 taxes before Trump Tax

[Anonymous Coward]

You can call it a tax cut till your blue in the face, it raises MY taxes, along with many others, so its a tax HIKE.

Note: I make roughly the median national salary and I don't live on a coast.

Re:A good thing

[DNS-and-BIND]

Diversity is strength. Wildly different people all together are the best. When everyone speaks the same language and is on the same page, that is a terrible loss of culture. It is incumbent upon us all to keep these languages alive and breathing, and keep these cultures from being annihilated by the Western behemoth.