Posts Tagged ‘Ayapaneco’ 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, like so many other indigenous
languages, it’s at risk of extinction. 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. The dictionary
is part of a race agains