SANTIAGO (Reuters) – An indigenous language from South America’s excessive south has all however vanished after the demise of its last residing speaker and guardian of its ancestral tradition.
Cristina Calderon died on Wednesday, aged 93. She had mastered the Yamana language of the Yagan group and after the demise of her sister in 2003 was the last particular person on the planet who might communicate it. She labored to avoid wasting her information by making a dictionary of the language with translations to Spanish.
“With her an vital a part of the cultural reminiscence of our folks is gone,” stated Lidia Gonzalez, Calderon’s daughter, on Twitter. Gonzalez is likely one of the representatives at present drafting a brand new structure in Chile.
The dictionary, nevertheless, meant there was hope of preserving the language in some type, she stated.
“Although together with her departure a wealth of particularly priceless empirical information is misplaced in linguistic phrases, the opportunity of rescuing and systematizing the language stay open,” she stated.
Although there are nonetheless just a few dozen Yagans left, over the generations folks from the group stopped studying the language, which was thought of “remoted” because it was troublesome to find out the origin of its phrases.
Calderon lived in a easy home and made a residing promoting knitted socks within the Chilean city of Villa Ukika, a city created by the Yagan folks on the outskirts of Puerto Williams.
The ancestral ethnic group used to populate the archipelagos of South America’s excessive south, now Chile and Argentina, an space which nudges in direction of the frozen Antarctic.
(Reporting by Fabian Cambero; Editing by Adam Jourdan and Rosalba O’Brien)
