51 indigenous languages on the brink of extinction

periodismo.investigacion@eluniversal.com.mx

They have little to no presence in the press and social media. They're constantly denied their right to be heard and lack the support of local, state and federal government. As a result, over the last two decades alone, 80% of indigenous languages that were in danger of going extinct, have now disappeared.

If things don't change, 51 of the 64 languages that are currently at the highest risk of going extinct will do so very soon. In fact, according to historical records, before the Spanish colonization of the New World, there were over 500 languages and soon after their arrival, around 143 languages were lost. And just during the Mexican Revolution, which lasted a little under 10 years, another six languages ceased to exist.

Today, the panorama doesn't look too good for any of the surviving languages. According to Mexico's National Institute of Indigenous Languages (Inali, Spanish acronym), of the 364 linguistic variances that exist today, 185 are not in immediate danger of going extinct, 72 are at medium risk, and another 43 are at high risk.

However, 64 are at very high risk of going extinct if they are not reassessed and rescued. These languages have less than 100 speakers, according to Mexico's National Institute of Statistic and Geography (Inegi, Spanish acronym), and they're are risk of going extinct in the next 20 years.

“These languages are in danger because they're not really covered by the press or mentioned on social media, and they're not really taken into account by the three levels of government. They've been reduced for use between family members and in certain cases within small communities; but they're overall use has gone into a deep decline. Since public politics are all monolingual, in many cases users stop using their languages with their own children, and to all of this you have to factor in the discrimination people face for using mother languages,” said Javier López Sánchez, director of the Inali.

EL UNIVERSAL visited five communities where Kiliwa, Oluteco, Kaqchikel, Mochó and Odami Tepehuano are spoken. However, the average age of the languages' users is above 70 years old. Almost everyone we interviewed said they face some form of discrimination for choosing to use their mother tongue. “When people see me, they tend to make fun of me… I've gotten used to putting up with it and being resistant. If we stop using our language, it's as if we had never been born. It pains me so much to know that our language is dying out,” told us one person we interviewed during one our visits.

We quickly noticed some heavy contradictions between the Inegi's figures and what we actually saw during our visits regarding the number of active speakers. For example, in the case of the Kiliwa language in Valle de la Trinidad in Ensenada, Baja California, according to the Inegi there are 194 registered active speakers; however, we only found five. In the case of the Oluteca language, there are 90 registered speakers; we found three.

Many indigenous people deny to speak their native language out of fear of facing discrimination and racism.

This quote by Cayetano, a speaker of the Kaqchikel language, easily epitomizes all of these speakers of languages on the brink of extinction: “Being indigenous doesn't make you inferior; our linguistic differences are nothing to feel self-conscious or ashamed about.”