Last speakers of dying Mexico lingo won’t talk
A centuries-old language in Mexico is reportedly on the verge of extinction as its last two fluent speakers refuse to talk to each other just because they don’t get along.
The language of Ayapaneco has been spoken in the land now known as Mexico for centuries. It has survived the Spanish conquest, seen off wars, revolutions, famines and floods.
But now, it’s at risk of dying out as Manuel Segovia, 75, and Isidro Velazquez, 69, who live less than half-a-mile apart in a village refuse to speak to each other despite being the only people fluent in Ayapaneco, the Guardian reported. “They don’t have a lot in common,” said Daniel Suslak, a linguistic anthropologist from Indiana University, who is involved with a project to produce a dictionary of Ayapaneco, that’s part of a race against time to revitalise the language.
The name Ayapaneco is an imposition by outsiders, and Segovia and Velazquez call their language “Nuumte Oote”, which means the “True Voice”, the newspaper said. “When I was a boy everybody spoke it. It’s disappeared little by little and now I suppose it might die with me,” said Segovia, adding he conversed in Ayapaneco with his brother but sadly he died 10 years ago.
—PTI
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