The Last Speaker of Her Tongue; The Only Speaker of His Tongue

David Malouf once wrote a profoundly moving and powerful short story called "The Only Speaker of His Tongue" (in "Antipodes", 1985):

"When I think of my tongue being no longer alive in the mouths of men, a chill goes over me that is deeper than my own death, since it is the gathered death of all my kind".

David was writing about a vanishing Aboriginal language and its last (male) speaker.

Radio National describes the story:

A Northern European lexicographer's encounter with the last remaining speaker of an Aboriginal language movingly brings home the loneliness and responsibility that such a role carries.

David Malouf is one of Australia's greatest writers. He has written novels, stories, plays, libretti, essays and memoirs, winning countless prizes and awards along the way.

David Malouf: The Complete Stories, published by Vintage Books in 2008.

Now comes news of the last fluent speaker of another small, isolated and almost extinct Nepalese language, Kusunda: BBC report

David Crystal discusses language life, death and resurrection (Pdf)

On a quite different topic, David Malouf asks why it's so hard to find happiness 

David Malouf talks about the pursuit of happiness (ABC/YouTube)

A great writer and a good friend. He kindly launched "The Cat of Portovecchio, Corfu Tales" in Sydney.

A thought about so called "dead languages" like Latin and Ancient Greek. Can one say that there was ever a "last speaker" or "only living speaker" of a particular dialect of Ancient Greek, someone who learned it from babyhood, with the mother's milk? Since the process of  linguistic change is very slow, at what point in history do scholars argue that Ancient Greek, or rather the less dominant dialects of Ancient Greek, died or were effectively "dead", if indeed they ever died? Possibly at the time of the transition to "koine" Greek, around the time of the conquests of Alexander the Great?

George Seferis has some interesting points to make on this topic.