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:
“One who speaks a foreign language just a little takes more pleasure in it than one who speaks it well. Enjoyment belongs to those who know things halfway.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“Any language is necessarily a finite system applied with different degrees of creativity to an infinite variety of situations, and most of the words and phrases we use are “prefabricated” in the sense that we don’t coin new ones every time we speak.”
—David Lodge (b. 1935)
“Like the train’s beat
Swift language flutters the lips
Of the Polish airgirl in the corner seat.”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)