Marcelo Dascal
Endangered Languages


10. Summary

Let me conclude with a part of a poem called "Glasbuyron - An Elegy for Endangered Languages", by Mark Abley, published in the Net, and reproduced in Iatiku n. 2.

Reason tells me it doesn't matter
if the final speaker of Huron
goes grey in a suburb of Detroit
where nobody grasps a syllable
of his grandmother's tongue.

Reason tells me it's not important
if Basque and Abenaki join
the dozens of unproductive
languages lately disposed of : what's
the big deal, where's the beef ?

Reason is scavenging the earth :
"More, more", it cries. You can't tell it
to use imagination. You can't
ask it to stop and listen
to the absence of Norn.

Mark Abley

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