The Last Speaker

A language is dying with its last surviving speaker. That speaker, elderly and clear-minded, has agreed to speak to you, a linguist. Your hope has been to document all that you can — grammar, vocabulary, tales, songs, even how the language shapes thought into patterns unique to its speakers. The speak has agreed to twelve sessions of conversation. But they are not a recording device or an old tome of knowledge. They are a human person, carrying with them the many things that people carry. Opinions about your work and what you deserve to know. Investments in what is communicated and how. Beliefs about whether saving a language through a research notebook amounts to saving a language in any meaningful sense. Your journal is your field notes. The moment the game ends, your journal will be the only record of a language never again to be given voice.