New language found in India

[Judi Lynn]

New language found in India
A "hidden" language spoken by only about 1,000 people has been discovered in the remote northeast corner of India
Published: 7:00AM BST 06 Oct 2010

Initially, researchers thought they were documenting a dialect of the Aka culture, a tribal community that subsists on farming and hunting, but they found an entirely different vocabulary and linguistic structure.

Even the speakers of the tongue, called Koro, did not realise that they had a distinct language, linguist K. David Harrison said.

Culturally, the Koro speakers are part of the Aka community in India's Arunachal Pradesh state, and Mr Harrison, associate professor of linguistics at Swarthmore College, said both groups merely considered Koro a dialect of the Aka language.

But researchers studying the groups found they used different words for body parts, numbers and other concepts, establishing Koro as a separate language.

"Koro is quite distinct from the Aka language," said Gregory Anderson, director of the Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages. "When we went there we were told it was a dialect of Aka, but it is a distant sister language."

More:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/india/8045244/New-language-found-in-India.html

[Odin2005]

1. Harrison has an excellent book on endagered languages.

Called The Last Speakers

[Judi Lynn]

2. Thanks for the tip. Sad subject. n/t