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

Posted by msmash on from the need-urgent-attention dept.

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.

6 of 177 comments (clear)

  1. Not really bad. by Gravis+Zero · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

    --
    Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
    1. Re:Not really bad. by Quirkz · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

      --
      The Quirkz Handbook of Self-Improvement for People Who Are Already Pretty Okay
    2. Re:Not really bad. by pz · · Score: 4

      Language is the same as culture. Or, perhaps better put, language is inextricably mixed with culture.

      Yes, it is possible to experience a culture without speaking the language, but that experience is muted and without depth. Language and culture grow into and out of each other. One might argue nuances, such as various dialects of American English supporting the variety of cultures in the different corners of the US, but without a unifying language across a population, a deep, resilient culture does not develop.

      My favorite example of this is the deaf versus blind populations. Blind people do not have a unifying culture that is starkly separate from the normal embedding culture, but deaf people do. Why? Because blind people communicate in their normal, native language whereas deaf people have a distinct language (i.e., sign language) that, with regional variations, defines subcultures that are separate and apart from the mainstream.

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      Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
    3. Re:Not really bad. by gman003 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Language studies are valuable.

      Languages evolve slowly, so they act as evidence for human migration patterns. The exact details of the migration into the Americas is still under debate, and languages form quite a bit of evidence. Consider the extent of the Dene-Yeniseian language family - members exist in parts of Siberia, Alaska, Canada and Southwest America (Navajo is the most well-known of these languages). This is good evidence that humans entered the continent from Siberia - but also good evidence that the migration occurred in at least two distinct, widely-separated waves, as no DY language is known in South America or eastern North America. Perhaps Taushiro, the Peruvian language the article focuses on, could have provided evidence for or against that theory.

      Languages also tell us things about the human brain. There are languages with no words for relative position (eg. left or right), but speakers can simply use absolute position (eg. east or west), and more interestingly, do so correctly. Apparently keeping track of your heading is something you can just do, if your language and lifestyle require it. There was quite a bit of uproar when a study of a certain Amazon language completely upended a lot of theories about human syntax - specifically, the language seemed to not allow recursion. Every sentence is a simple declarative, not allowing things like this sub-clause you're reading right now. (I will note that the study was not very rigorous, and ongoing follow-up studies may prove it false - some of the other claims are already overturned.) But, either way, we learn something about the human mind and its capacity for language.

  2. Happens twice a month by kaur · · Score: 4, Informative

    https://livinglanguages.wordpr...

    This estimation can be wrong in many ways, but the point remains: languages do die all the time.

  3. The Last Man on Earth to Speak His Language by PopeRatzo · · Score: 4, Funny

    And with his dying breath, he whispered one word..."covfefe".

    --
    You are welcome on my lawn.