Speak my Name

I was born in your heartbeat before you had fingernails.

Before your toes had taken shape.

Passed down from your elders.

Passed down from the moon and the morning sun.

I took root in your mouth.

Breathed life into the soft space behind the teeth, between gum and memory.

I lived in laughter, in hunting cries, in the spaces between the stars.

I was the map that guided you through the land.

Akuntsu.

We were born other, but not lesser.

The leaves beneath our feet. The same leaves.

The sky above our heads. The same sky.

Before you, there had been more. So many more.

You worshipped me not as a god, but as your own blood.

As one.

Konibu taught you well.

You carved me into the thatch of your roof.

Symbols of remembrance. Of love.

So much love.

You painted me on your body in achiote at the ceremonies,

giving thanks for fruit, for water, for the promise of more days to come.

And all of you felt the colours of the earth through my eyes.

You knew what it was to live because we shared a cadence.

As one.

At night, you dreamed in the silver of my tongue.

Until the men came

with their paper dreams

and golden bullets.

You did not hear them when they cried, ‘Kneel’.

You did not know the glint of metal. Cold and uneven.

You had known only the softness of wood and the brittleness of bone.

The simplicity of stone.

The materials of our lives.

We did not know the sound of power.

It stopped voice in its head before it had the chance to speak.

The blood of man spilled across the land.

Then there were seven

They did not speak. They pronounced.

They drew lines using the blood of our people.

Named the soil as their own.

Theirs for the taking.

They proclaimed us illegitimate.

As if names were ever theirs to invoke.

As if their strength was born of shrapnel and steel,

not from the will of the heart.

Then there were 3.

How could we have known?

The wind that shaped us had never brought us such cold.

Such indifference.

How could we have known?

They were all gone but you. You and I.

I hid in your mouth, then.

For survival. For truth.

You spoke aloud only to the trees.

To the wind.

To the bones of our dead.

In the night, we were alone.

Crying into the dark.

And still, I answered.

Always I answered.

I was always here with you.

And I am here now.

Watching us die.

Your last breath, my own.

I watch your ribs rise and fall.

Wonder what thoughts now,

as we say goodbye.

Ururú.

They burned our bodies.

Charred skin for the want of wood.

They buried our homes.

Hiding their shame.

They silenced us.

Until there were 0.

They will search for me in archives.

In glossaries. In classrooms.

They will not find me there.

Akuntsu.

Speak my name.

Linguists estimate that over 500 languages have become extinct in the last few centuries. More than 3,000 are currently endangered. Every two weeks, another language dies. Most vanish without a single recording, a dictionary, or even a name known beyond their last speaker’s village. Not because they were inferior. Not because they were unneeded. But because someone decided they didn’t matter enough to save. Because someone decided that the resources offered by the earth were theirs for the taking.

Language death is not a metaphor. It is not a soft fading. It is erasure: political, systemic, deliberate. Sometimes it comes with missionaries. Sometimes with mining companies. Sometimes with silence, funding cuts, or genocides that don’t even make the western news cycle twitch.

A language is more than vocabulary. It is a way of seeing. It shapes how we mark time, how we speak to our dead, how we dream. When a language dies, the world becomes narrower. We lose a rhythm. A way of knowing. A life.

And still, they die. Quietly. Unmarked. Unknown.

Ururú was the last speaker of Akuntsu. She lived in Rondônia, Brazil. When she died in 2021, the language died with her. There are no surviving fluent speakers. No grammar books. No audio. There are murmurs of it in journals, and a few fragments of vocabulary noted in margins. But for the most part, Akuntsu is gone.

Not because it outlived its usefulness. But because it was not allowed to live.

We call that extinction. But that’s a lie. This was not a natural death. This was a massacre.

But she was here. Her language was here. It spoke the world into being. And when she left, it left with her.

There is no archive. But there was Akuntsu.

There is no recording. And there was Ururú.

And there were thousands more like her.

History being made every day. Undocumented. Unknown. Gone.

History being made every day.

Undocumented.

Unknown.

Gone.

by 8 March 2024 – Tandia

by 8 March 2024 – Mawes

by 8 March 2024 – Luhu

2 May 2023 – Columbia-Moses

5 October 2022 – Mednyj Aleut

16 February 2022 – Yahgan

by 2022? – Moghol

by 2022 – Lachoudisch

25 September 2021 – Wukchumni dialect of Tule-Kaweah Yokuts

27 August 2021 – Yuchi

7 March 2021 – Bering Aleut

17 February 2021 – Juma

2 December 2020 – Tuscarora

4 April 2020 – Aka-Cari dialect of Northern Andamanese

23 March 2019 – Ngandi

4 January 2019 – Tehuelche

9 December 2016 – Mandan

30 August 2016 – Wichita

29 July 2016 – Gugu Thaypan

11 February 2016 – Nuchatlaht dialect of Nuu-chah-nulth

4 January 2016 – Whulshootseed

4 February 2014 – Klallam

by 2014 – Demushbo

by 2014 – Sarghulami

5 June 2013 – Livonian

26 March 2013 – Yurok

by 2013 – Sabüm

2 October 2012 – Cromarty dialect of Scots

11 July 2012 – Upper Chinook

10 March 2012 – Holikachuk

c. 2012 – Dhungaloo

c. 2012 – Ngasa

by 2012 – Mardijker

10 April 2011 – Apiaká

2011 – Lower Arrernte

by 2011 – Anserma

24 October 2010 – Pazeh dialect of Pazeh

20 August 2010 – Cochin Indo-Portuguese Creole

26 January 2010 – Aka-Bo

November 2009 – Aka-Kora

22 February 2009 – Great Andamanese koiné

2009 – Nyawaygi

by 2009 – Muruwari

by 2009 – Agavotaguerra

by 2009 – Arikem

by 2009 – Karipúna

by 2009 – Pataxó Hã-Ha-Hãe

by 2009 – Aribwatsa

by 2009 – Lelak

by 2009 – Papora-Hoanya

by 2009 – Warluwara

30 July 2008 – Tübatulabal

April 2008-2012 – Dura

24 February 2008 – Plains Apache

21 January 2008 – Eyak

Late 2000s – Ruga

after 2007 – Rusenu

2007 – Northeastern Maidu

10 August 2007 – Gros Ventre

c. 2007 – Javindo

by 2007 – Hpun

by 2007 – Hoti

11 July 2006 – Wasco dialect of Upper Chinook

2006 – Zire

2006 – Ludza dialect of Estonian

by 2006 – Zumaya

3 November 2005 – Osage

2005 – Berbice Creole Dutch

by 2005 – Barrow Point

2005 – Kerek

20 September 2004 – Nüshu script

ca. 2004? – Duli

29 December 2003 – Akkala Sami

22 November 2003 – Wintu

14 September 2003 – Klamath-Modoc

September 2003 – Garig Ilgar

by 2003 – Alngith

by 2003 – Areba

by 2003 – Atampaya

by 2003 – Umbindhamu

by 2003 – Makolkol

2003 – Umotína

4 November 2002 – Serrano

31 August 2002 – Unami

23 May 2002 – Gaagudju

by 2001 – Amanayé

c. 2000 – Chiapanec

c. 2000 – Mapia

c. 2000 – Cholón

c. 2000 – Lapachu

c. 2000 – Poyanawa

by 2000 – Central Pomo

by 2000 – Maku language of Auari

c. 2000 – Rennellese Sign Language

2000s – Shiriana

https://www.ethnologue.com

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_time_of_extinction