Neatorama - The Ayapaneco language is dying – it’s down to the last two speakers, and in a twist worthy of a Hollywood treatment (can we say a linguistic "Grumpy Old Men"?) they’re not talking to each other!
There are just two people left who can speak it fluently – but they refuse to talk to each other. Manuel Segovia, 75, and Isidro Velazquez, 69, live 500 metres apart in the village of Ayapa in the tropical lowlands of the southern state of Tabasco. It is not clear whether there is a long-buried argument behind their mutual avoidance, but people who know them say they have never really enjoyed each other’s company.
"They don’t have a lot in common," says Daniel Suslak, a linguistic anthropologist from Indiana University, who is involved with a project to produce a dictionary of Ayapaneco. Segovia, he says, can be "a little prickly" and Velazquez, who is "more stoic," rarely likes to leave his home.
I hate this kind of shit. Like these two people just straight don't like each other. Leave it alone. Why should we mettle with their affairs? Just because they're the last two people on earth who can speak this dying pig latin-like language? Who cares?
If I'm old and retired the last thing I want to do is be forced to hang out with some guy down the street I've been avoiding the better part of my life. He's old and entitled to his opinions at this point. It's like how old people are allowed to be racists and crotchety towards everyone. It's an unwritten rule, they've earned it, plus they're so old at this point that their racist rants aren't really a threat to anyone. Ignorant? Sure. Posing any real danger? Nah.
