Did you know that the 'lost' civilizations of the Aztecs, Mayans and Incas are still alive today? Or that Aztec lyric poetry celebrates flowers and spiritual happiness?
One and a half million Aztec, or Nahua, people still speak the beautiful Aztec language Nahuatl. Such words as chocolate, tomato, chili, coyote and Mexico come from Nahuatl, but this does not convey the otherworldly beauty and dancing rhythms of the language. Mayan, spoken by five or six million Mayan people around Guatemala and the Yucatan, and the Incan language, Quechua, which has eight to ten million speakers, both have their own otherworldly beauty and dancing rhythms, and I'm sure you will be able to pronounce them better than me! All three languages have a rich oral tradition and great written literature, which preserves some of the otherworldly beauty even in translation, not to mention the spiritual/mythic feel and extrordinary subjects of the epic and lyric poems! These works, those which I have read on websites on the Internet, have such an extrordinary spiritual/philosophical quality, just don't seem of this world, and yet they describe what is most real about our world! You can find these websites by searching the language names (Nahuatl or Quechua), and the language name and 'language' or 'poetry', and you will learn of these extrordinary languages too, or for Mayan, simply search 'mayan language' and 'mayan poetry'- it's that easy! A whole world awaits you! To hear me describe more of my impressions of this literature, see my poetry page (the second paragraph at the bottom).
What an amazing thing! Those people should be proud! Even the languages themselves are an incredible living treasure!!!