土著語言僅剩兩名傳人 二人互不搭理

As its last two speakers, you might expect Manuel Segovia and Isidro Velazquezto to discuss how best to preserve their dying language。

But the pair engage in no such discussions - or any other for that matter - as they refuse to speak to each other。

They live less than half a mile apart in a village in Mexico but despite being the only people fluent in Ayapaneco, they apparently do not get on。

Although the Ayapaneco language survived the Spanish conquest it is believed to have suffered as a result of compulsory Spanish education, migration of its speakers and urbanization。

The language's biggest downfall came in the mid-20th century. For several decades indigenous children were explicitly forbidden from speaking anything other than Spanish。

Then in the 1970s people started moving away and it has been diluted to the state that it is currently in。

The name of the language was given by outsiders and both men call their language Nuumte Oote, meaning True Voice。

Daniel Suslak, an Indiana University linguistic anthropologist, is compiling a dictionary to record the existence of the language。

They both have different versions and cannot agree on some details and the dictionary that Mr Suslak is compiling will contain both versions。

There are 6,000 languages in the world and of those around half，are expected to disappear over the next century。土著語言僅剩兩名傳人 二人卻面北眉南

曼努埃爾•賽格維亞和伊斯德羅•維拉格孜託是墨西哥一門土著語言的最後兩名傳人，想必他們應該相互切磋，商討如何儲存這即將消亡的語言。

然而他們卻從未就此交談過，並且拒絕和對方說話。

他們同住在墨西哥的一個村子，兩家距離不過半英里，二人雖然均精通阿雅帕內克語言，卻總是合不來。

阿雅帕內克語言雖然在西班牙殖民者征服美洲時倖存下來，卻因當局強行推行西班牙語教學，土著人逐漸遷出本地以及城市化等原因，而日漸式微。

這門語言在20世紀中期遭受了巨大沖擊，土著兒童一律禁止使用除西語外的任何語言，禁令橫行長達幾十年。

阿雅帕內克是外族人起的名字，此種語言原名努姆特•歐特，意為“真理之聲”。

印第安納大學語言人類學教授丹尼爾•蘇斯拉克致力於編纂字典以記錄尚存的各種語言。

由於此二人使用語言並非完全一致，有些細節也有分歧，蘇斯拉克將兩種版本都收錄在字典裡。

世界上目前有6000種語言倖存，然而估計到了下個世紀，約有半數的將消亡。