The Conservative Cave
Interests => The Science Club => Topic started by: bijou on October 05, 2010, 02:21:12 PM
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In the foothills of the Himalayas, two field linguists have discovered an oddity as rare as any endangered species—a language completely new to science.
The researchers, who announced their find Tuesday in Washington, D.C., encountered it for the first time along the western ridges of Arunachal Pradesh, India's northeastern-most state, where more than 120 languages are spoken. There, isolated by craggy slopes and rushing rivers, the hunters and subsistence farmers who speak this rare tongue live in a dozen or so villages of bamboo houses built on stilts.
The researchers identified the language—called Koro—during a 2008 expedition conducted as part of National Geographic's Enduring Voices project. ...
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703843804575534122591921594.html
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Interesting, especially about the bit that this "language" isn't a dialect of a larger language. It apparently hangs out there all by itself, but that's not really surprising given the isolation of this small group of people.