Nobody Tells Me Anything Anymore

I missed this in 2011.  It's someone's fault, dammit.

Languages usually die out when the last speaker dies, and that is usually a person who lost their last conversational partner, often a relative, just a few years earlier. Some linguists would say that the language is officially dead when there is only one speaker, as without conversation there are features that are irrecoverable even in theory, as speakers do not notice them consciously. If you have any experience with returning to a place that had unusual features you can get a sense of this. A friend now almost 80 who learned Swedish in America from her mother and especially grandparents went to Sverige to visit and used that language in conversation as well as she was able, as did her husband, who had a similar experience.  Eventually someone laughed "You sound like an old farmer!" In the quick changes in Romania after the Revolution, radio and TV programs were no longer considered dangerous and people got cell phones.  My sons, who lived in tiny Transylvanian villages in the mid 1990s, stayed briefly in foster care and orphanages in the late 90s, and came to America in 2001 went to a wedding in a bigger city (Marghita) in 2007 and quickly found that people were chuckling at some of their vocabulary, though they were speaking their first language. A word for pants or trousers was considered particularly uproarious. Only a few old people brightened and smiled benignly at its use. 

You may know examples even in America. The use of tonic for "soft drink" was common in my childhood. I don't recall whether I used it myself - I think we were likely to say soda instead, but I knew plenty of people, not just older ones, who preferred the term. Moxie and other beverages were sold as "nerve tonics" or other medicinals* a century earlier, and carbonated beverages were common earlier here than elsewhere (as were "bubblers," which actually originated in Wisconsin) so the name took. My father's second wife, who lives on in Nabnasset, MA, still says "tonic," and she can't be the only one. There may even be a few from my generation who say it. But if you multiply these things by a thousand and throw in six or seven trades or practices with their own vocabularies that are now uncommon, you may get to see how languages die in pieces, sections, and dribbles, until there is suddenly nothing left. Thus has it always been, though it is accelerated now that the children move to the cities for jobs and schooling - more true now than ever in the past 10,000 years, I think.

But Ayapeneco, an indigenous language in Mexico did not follow that pattern to the bitter end, but added a twist, which I missed hearing about at the time. The last two speakers refuse to talk to each other. I can see my brothers and myself pretending to do that while still secretly emailing or texting each other, just for the glory of it, but these two have no need to speak together for any reason, and so don't. 

Except it seems to be a hoax.  A linguistics hoax. I have written about how to detect hoaxes before (summary: if they are too perfect) but I admit I didn't see this coming.

The nearly-extinct languages mentioned in the article:

Ter Sami (note the second term, a people we used to call "Lapplanders") The last two speakers were uncontactable or dead in 2020.

Kayardild One fluent speaker may have still been alive in 2015, but only 8 spoke it in any fashion as of 2016.

Lengilu Three native speakers as of 2000. Bye-bye.

Mabire Sorry to be so ethnocentric, but a chief named Souleyman Dabanga sounds like a humorous character by PG Wodehouse or Evelyn Waugh. The other two speakers were elderly siblings in 2001, and Dabanga now lives in another village. Not promising.

Tehuelche the last speaker died in 2019

Emine Sinmaz is not a language, as I originally assumed, but the writer of the article.

*Sponge-Headed Scienceman, who literally wrote the book on Moxie is now working on a book about the early history of soft drinks in New England - or maybe just New Hampshire.  I already know a couple of the stories about that, but will hold my fire until publication.  I wouldn't want to depress sales, ya know.