The Lost Lullabies of Extinct Languages

They did not perish in fire or flood.

But in a whisper, a dying thud—

The tongues thereupon whispered amongst the grasses

Now deep underground, their echoes went by.

No comet hit, no trumpet blew

Silence alone grew, as silences do.

A lullaby in the Eyak style,

Now grown long since, once a child calmed.

His cradle swayed with woven song,

But Eyak left no trace on time.

Only the air recalls how it swayed—

A spectre in vowels, in unreburied breaths.

Silent words, untold stories.

Fell quiet when speakers broke away.

And not from war or clashing storm

But from a world where speech must be conforming.

A schoolroom's chalk, a churchman's frown

Where the indigenous sounds were in demand.

Oh, who will voice out Taushiro

Whose orators dwindled to one—and to none?

The alphabet fell short of its name.

No fire, no lasting dictionary.

Soft breezes that blow through tropical leaves,

Whisper what no soul ever suspects.

Kusunda, Araki, Rotokas—

Stripped from the maps, like shattered glass.

But when they cut the holy timber,

And sang of sky and motherhood.

Their syntax had portrayed beast and god.

Their grammar was familiar with war and feast.

Can you hear Ormuri rain

Knocking on a Pashto window?

A vanishing language of rain and root.

Lost to bullets and war.

A lullaby drenched in sounds of today

Left to decay in abandoned phones.

These were not the tongues of kings and thrones.

But campfire breath, in flesh and blood.

Mothers humming for their kin.

Grandfathers inebriated by where they've been.

Their stories not worthy of publication or fame,

But still holy, in name and voice.

What perishes whenever language departs from the land?

A rhythm carved by oldhand.

The legend of fish that swam the stars

The prayer sewn into tribal tattoos.

Herbs referred to as killers of the dead.

The only joke the hunters shared.

Every word was more than word alone—

It was a root, a skin, a stone.

A compass inscribed within the mind.

To chart the self, to map the pain.

When there is silence and words die

The nation's soul is lost.

A language is not merely a tool,

It's history's school, philosophy's blood.

It bends around the shape of snow.

It influences the way we grieve and grow.

There is no word for past in Pirahã.

Time itself cannot be understood.

When Ubykh last made a noise,

It fell not to heaven, but into earth.

Adyghe kin could only bemoan—

The last speaker, therefore, was not born.

His stories died on his lips.

The requiem was sung, the choir silent.

And still, they remain on the worldwide web,

In whispers AI won't ever forget.

Digitized, they're seen on—

Files stored despite speakers lost.

Can pixels host a religious ritual?

Can code bring back ancient night?

Resurrection is wearing a headset today

Anthropologists raise an eyebrow.

Shooting the children of the latest

Repairing seams too weak to hold.

Revival scripts, reborn with apps—

Can the soul, though, survive the intervals?

And hope may come in weak breath,

One child saved from tongue's cold death.

Learned to count in Manx once more,

To chant on the beach in Cornish.

A dad finds out what grandpa stated

And words flow, and silence is broken.

So let us foster each voice—

Not always the popular or boisterous choice.

For every idiom, tune, and wail,

Bears truth that shall never perish.

If we forget what tongues once knew

We clip off roots from human dew.

Speak not for profit, power, gain—

But for the pleasure of the sound world.

Sing now in words all but forgotten.

Restore the evening prior to the dawn.

Since in all the vowels the earth has kissed.

There's a world we've barely missed.

A single syllable, however, can express

The weight of secrets unrevealed.

The stillness of moss under bare feet.

The warning at where two rivers confluence.

A cadence composed of fire and rock.

Something which no translation dares to say.

What if there is no moving tongue?

When mothers have no words to say

The evening with chants that used to bring peace

And generations have no lease?

It leaves the vernacular, however—not alone.

It takes the exact shape of home.

A home is more than roof and wall—

It's the way you speak when shadows fall.

It's how you grieve, how you forgive

Your definition of the will to live.

When words dissolve, the map disappears with them—

And no longer do star names.

The world just goes on, and nobody might care

That one extra dialect thins the air.

But something hurts in culture's fabric

Each time a voice is absolutely dead.

Not all loss comes with screaming tears—

While others are under forgetful skies.

How many folks laughed in Hupa?

Or being read as Kawi verse was read?

How many buildings based on Klamath myth,

Now quiet on Pacific coast?

Their aspirations were uttered into being.

Their knowledge was passed from wife to husband.

No flag was waved, no anthem was sung

To commemorate the day their final words went astray.

Nothing but silent rooms and clasped hands.

Where silence finally comprehends.

And scholars dig with somber melancholy

With dusty sounds that cannot be replicated.

But in some hearts, the flame shakes—

For every tongue, there returns a soul.

Whenever the young are memorizing the elders' verse,

The silence is a bit less awful.

The syllables should perhaps be fixed.

And yet they drift on broken air.

So if you hear a foreign sentence,

Don't avert or be blinded by it

Ask them what it is and why it stayed.

And how the voice used to be conveyed.

For every word that's almost forgotten

Deserves a place where it continues to exist.

Let no more lullabies be lost

To world price and standard languages.

We are not done with fewer songs—

The world is spacious, and silence is injurious.

Each! silenced! voice! is! a! light! extinguished

Don't let tomorrow silence them.

Of every tongue that fades from air,

A piece of all of us is there.