TY - BOOK AU - Kelly,Piers TI - The last language on earth: linguistic utopianism in the Philippines T2 - Oxford studies anthropology language series SN - 9780197509920 AV - PL7501.E85 K45 2022 U1 - 499.2 K29 23/eng/20210930 PY - 2022///] CY - New York, NY PB - Oxford University Press KW - Eskayan language N1 - Includes bibliographical references and index; Introduction Part I: Locating the Eskaya. Language, literacy, and revolt in the southern Philippines Contact and controversy Part II: Language, letters, literature. How Eskayan is used today The writing system Words and their origins Eskaya literature and traditional historiography Part III: Insurrection and Resurrection. From Pinay to Mariano Datahan (and back again) Eskayan revealed: a scenario Conclusion: The first language and the last word; CoED; Bachelor of Secondary Education major in Social Studies N2 - "The Eskayan language of Bohol in the southern Philippines has been an object of controversy ever since it came to light in the early 1980s. Written in an unusual script Eskayan bears no obvious similarity to any known language of the Philippines, a fact that has prompted speculation that it was either displaced from afar, fossilized from the deep past, or invented as an elaborate hoax. This book investigates the history of Eskayan through a systematic review of its writing system, grammar and lexicon, and carefully evaluates written and oral narratives provided by its contemporary speakers. The linguistic analysis largely supports the traditional view that Eskayan was the deliberate creation of a legendary ancestor by the name of Pinay. The study traces the identity of Pinay through the turbulent history of early 20th-century Bohol when the island suffered a series of catastrophes at the hands of the United States occupation. It was at this time that the ancestor Pinay was channelled by Mariano Datahan, a multilingual prophet who foretold that English and other languages would be abandoned and that Eskayan would one day be spoken by everyone in the world. To make sense of this situation, the book draws on theorizations of postcolonial resistance, language ideology, mimesis, and the utopian political dynamics of highland societies. In so doing, it offers a linguistic and ethnographic history of Eskayan and of the ideologies and historical circumstances that motivated its creation"-- ER -