"Fight Linguistic Extinction!"

Title:the Lazarus Tongue.

Author:Rodlox.

Summary:He is the last speaker of his language, and he is a 4400; he objects more to the former than the latter.

Fandom:The 4400.

Pairing:None.

Author's Note:Yes, there really are such things as "lazarus taxa"...so I figured a "lazarus tongue" was not impossible. After all, linguistic exinction is a fact of the last 60 years.

He has a name in English, given by his grandparent. He is Jake.

He has a name in his own language, but he's the only one who uses it.

As one of the 4400, he has a number. He is 3333. He doesn't mind it. None of them, not a one of his fellow returnees had ever asked to be taken by whatever forces were responsible for all of them being relocated to the year 2004.

He was taken away in 1948, pulled from a community of friends and family, a place where people still spoke the same language they'd spoken for an uncounted number of generations. They were the last community left who used that language, called a strong dialect by out-of-towners. And then he'd been removed from there.

And now he's been sent back, only the year is 2004. They're nice enough here, giving him a change of clothes and a bite to eat. But they've also told him that he's the last speaker of his language. Before he'd come back, in fact, the last one had died fifteen years ago. Linguistic extinction, they call it; just as they call him a linguistic miracle. A lazarus language, some say: one that was believed gone for a long time, only to be found once more. He's glad they're happy about it, but he'd give anything just to hold a conversation, to talk in the language of his boyhood -- even to be taunted in that language would be a good thing, he tells himself.

When he was a boy, he'd held conversations in that wonderful speech, shouted and played with those words. He'd grown up amidst the forests of sound that his language had grown into centuries ago. A man now, he's the only one left, the forests all clear-cut.

Organizations seek audiences with him now, the Smithsonian and others, all anxious to record his language, to set down on paper and tape the sounds of his tongue. He obliges them in all the ways they ask, speaking his language and his smattering of English and IƱupiat, always giving them time to be sure the tape caught the nuances of the last tone, to be sure they jotted down the accent marks over the letters. And one day a group of Inuit comes to him one day, theirs being the closest to his language as exists anymore, and offers him a place in their community. He's tempted, so very tempted, but he turns them down. Before he'd vanished, they were the ones who said his language was a dialect of their own. He won't live his last days with them, he is certain.

It takes some digging on the part of his new friends here, but he finds his family isn't entirely gone. He's learned he has a grandson now. The boy speaks only English.

The End.

"Fight Linguistic Extinction!"