1. Jeru
Jeru (or Great Andamanese) is spoken by fewer than 20 people on the Andaman Islands in the Indian Ocean. It is generally believed that Andamanese languages might be the last surviving languages whose history goes back to pre-Neolithic times in Southeast Asia and possibly the first settlement of the region by modern humans moving out of Africa. The languages of the Andamans cannot be shown to be related to any other languages spoken on earth.
2. N|u (also called Khomani)
This is a Khoisan language spoken by fewer than 10 elderly people whose traditional lands are located in the Kalahari Gemsbok National Park in South Africa. The Khoisan languages are remarkable for having click sounds – the | symbol is pronounced like the English interjection tsk! tsk! used to express pity or shame.The closest relative of N|u is !Xóõ (also called Ta'a and spoken by about 4,000 people) which has the most sounds of any language on earth: 74 consonants, 31 vowels, and four tones (voice pitches).
3. Ainu
The Ainu language is spoken by a small number of old people on the island of Hokkaido in the far north of Japan. They are the original inhabitants of Japan, but were not recognised as a minority group by the Japanese government until this year. The language has very complicated verbs that incorporate a whole sentence's worth of meanings, and it is the vehicle of an extensive oral literature of folk stories and songs. Moves are underway to revive Ainu language and cultural practices.4. Thao
Sun Moon Lake of central Taiwan is the home of the Thao language, now spoken by a handful of old people while the remainder of the community speaks Taiwanese Chinese (Minnan). Thao is an Austronesian language related to languages spoken in the Philippines, Indonesia and the Pacific, and represents one of the original communities of the Austronesians before they sailed south and east over 3,000 years ago.
5. Yuchi
Yuchi is spoken in Oklahoma, USA, by just five people all aged over 75. Yuchi is an isolate language (that is, it cannot be shown to be related to any other language spoken on earth). Their own name for themselves is Tsoyaha, meaning "Children of the Sun". Yuchi nouns have 10 genders, indicated by word endings: six for Yuchi people (depending on kinship relations to the person speaking), one for non-Yuchis and animals, and three for inanimate objects (horizontal, vertical, and round). Efforts are now under way to document the language with sound and video recordings, and to revitalise it by teaching it to children.
6. Oro Win
The Oro Win live in western Rondonia State, Brazil, and were first contacted by outsiders in 1963 on the headwaters of the Pacaas Novos River. The group was almost exterminated after two attacks by outsiders and today numbers just 50 people, only five of whom still speak the language. Oro Win is one of only five languages known to make regular use of a sound that linguists call "a voiceless dental bilabially trilled affricate". In rather plainer language, this means it's produced with the tip of the tongue placed between the lips which are then vibrated (in a similar way to the brrr sound we make in English to signal that the weather is cold).7. Kusunda
The Kusunda are a former group of hunter-gatherers from western Nepal who have intermarried with their settled neighbours. Until recently it was thought that the language was extinct but in 2004 scholars at Tribhuvan University in Kathmandu located eight people who still speak the language. Another isolate, with no connections to other languages.
8. Ter Sami
This is the easternmost of the Saami group of languages (formerly called Lapp, a derogatory term), located on the Kola Peninsula in Russia. It is spoken by just 10 elderly people among approximately 100 ethnic Ter Sami who all now speak Russian as their daily language. Ter Sami is related to Finnish and other Uralic languages spoken in Russia and Siberia, and distantly to Hungarian.
9. Guugu Yimidhirr
Guugu Yimidhirr is an Australian Aboriginal language spoken at Hopevale near Cooktown in northern Queensland by around 200 people. A wordlist was collected by Captain James Cook in 1770 and it has given English (and the rest of the world's languages) the word kangaroo. Guugu Yimidhirr (like some other Aboriginal languages) is remarkable for having a special way of speaking to certain family members (like a man's father-in-law or brother-in-law) in which everyday words are replaced by completely different special vocabulary. For example, instead of saying bama dhaday for "the man is going" you must say yambaal bali when speaking to these relatives as a mark of respect and politeness.
10. Ket
Ket is the last surviving member of a family of languages spoken along the Yenesei River in eastern Siberia. Today there are around 600 speakers but no children are learning it since parents prefer to speak to them in Russian. Ket is the only Siberian language with a tone system where the pitch of the voice can give what sound like identical words quite different meanings. (Much like Chinese or Yoruba). To add to the difficulty for any westerner wishing to learn it, it also has extremely complicated word structure and grammar.
Peter K Austin
17 comments:
Very cool post.
Don't forget Wichita. There's only ONE living speaker left.
http://www.kumeyaay.com/2008/01/last-fluent-speaker-of-wichita-tribal-language-preserves-whats-left/
Very interesting, languages spoken by just 5 people, amazing, the world is changing so damn fast.
Just let them die out
Another article about language extinction: http://www.unesco.org/courier/2000_04/uk/doss01.htm.
keep the languages alive! be proud of what you have!!!!!!
Let frat boys die out. Είναι μαλάκες.
i agree with captain
While I agree that these languages should be recorded and documented for the sake of understanding linguistic roots, why should we be teaching them to children?
The purpose of a language is communication. Teaching a child a language that virtually nobody knows is a waste. They should be learning the world's major languages (eg English, Chinese, French, and Spanish)
the way we communicate signifies the ways we think; WE, the folks who know the major communicative languages of the modern world, can learn NEW things from old languages
language is an important part of culture. when a language dies, a culture loses its last links to the distant, obscure past. for a lot of people, those links are very meaningful.
I feel Yiddish should be added to the list.
My brother and I are the last speakers of Schmoina, the language of the Stetch people of what is now called "The Bronx" but used to be Flentzky. In Schmoina their are only 17 verbs but 115 tenses and nine genders plus 7 time markers which conflate the verbs chaotically. We speak Schmoina between ourselves but have preferred to speak to our children in Fehrtzle, a partly aromatic language with strong pheromonal accents. Our favorite words are Kazaika, Blummis, and Fluterus. Too bad no one will ever remember our tongue. Or our earlobes, either.
I forgot to mention that Schmoina is related to Yiddish, but not by marriage.
Out of the whole list... I really wanna learn Schmoina! I think these languages should definately be recorded and studied by linguists, but in some cases the language may belong to a culture or way of life that no longer exists and will never exist again, so the cultural ties of that language become obsolete. Teaching kids a language that they can neither connect with culturally nor communicate in is too much effort for no reward. Also, its easy to become nostalgic about the distant obscure past of a particular cultural group but what if that past is characterised by poverty, oppression and a daily, grinding struggle to survive? Would you want people 500 years from now to work to maintain a link with today, a time full of selfishness, wastefulness and chauvinism? Just a thought.
As soon as I stumbled this post, I had to search for Ket. An old college professor of mine, Dr. Vajda, was the guy that developed (or assisted the Ket in developing) a writing system for it.
A language is more than the sum of all the words in its dictionary. A language is where the spirit of its speakers reside. A language is a culture. A language is a unique perspective of the its speaker's relationship to the world. A language is the truth and meaning of a culture, civilization and the beings that dwell in it.
When a language dies, an entire human populace, an entire collective gathering of humans with their unique understand and meaning of the world also dies. When a language dies, an entire historical tree of humanity dies also.
A language is more than the words found in its dictionary. A language is the house of Being. A language is where Existence erupts, where the world takes physical meaning in the form of sound and iteration.
Death of a language is the end of existence for an entire world of humanity, an entire history of that humanity.
Death of a language is existential genocide.
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