Language
Their numbers dwindled precipitously to the point where there are fewer than 300 remaining and only a handful who speak their native language. Most speak Quichua, some speak a patois of Kichwa and Záparo. The oldest surviving Zápara is a woman, about 70 years old, Ana Maria Santi. She refuses to drink alcoholic chicha or to eat spider monkey meat, which most Zápara now hunt and eat because they can get no other meat. To Ana Maria, this seems cannibalistic. "When we are down to eating our ancestors, what is left?" She and her family live in the hamlet of on the river, home to some forty people, about a seventh of what remains of their nation.
- In 2001, their population numbered no more than 300 (200 in Ecuador and 100 in Peru), of whom only five, all aged over 70, still speak the Záparo language.
The UNESCO declared the Záparo language as an "Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity" in 2001
Read more about this topic: Zaparo People
Famous quotes containing the word language:
“No language is rude that can boast polite writers.”
—Aubrey Beardsley (1872–1898)
“One can say of language that it is potentially the only human home, the only dwelling place that cannot be hostile to man.”
—John Berger (b. 1926)
“Public speaking is done in the public tongue, the national or tribal language; and the language of our tribe is the men’s language. Of course women learn it. We’re not dumb. If you can tell Margaret Thatcher from Ronald Reagan, or Indira Gandhi from General Somoza, by anything they say, tell me how. This is a man’s world, so it talks a man’s language.”
—Ursula K. Le Guin (b. 1929)