Dying Language's Last Two Speakers Stop Fighting to Save the Language Mark J. Miller - brandchannel
go to original May 21, 2014

How to save a near-extinct language #First (Vodafone Deutschland)

Telecom companies survive when people talk to one another. Vodafone went the extra mile in its effort to encourage communication in one particular part of the world: a village in Mexico where the last two speakers of a dying language, Ayapaneco, live.

The problem, as the UK's Campaign Live reports, was that the last two speakers, both men in their 70s, hadn't spoken to each other in years due to a rift about the language itself. Their silence and fallout would mean the end of Ayapaneco and another piece of Mexican history lost; but Vodafone wouldn't let that happen.

The brand and local villagers teamed up to build a school in town and dispatched Stanford University linguistic anthropologist Professor James A. Fox to speak with the men and fill them in on their cultural responsibility to pass on the language. The entire effort was documented in a short film as part of the Vodafone Firsts campaign across 10 markets.

"'First' demonstrates how language - one of the oldest forms of communication - can be given a new lease of life thanks to modern communications: mobile technology and the Internet," said Gregor Gründgens, the brand director of Vodafone Germany, according to Marketing Magazine. "Technology can enable some amazing things. In this case, helping to prevent a language from becoming extinct."

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