New Language Discovered in India

A new language has been discovered in the state of Arunachal Pradesh, in the North East of India. The new language is called Koro, and it derives from the Burmese and Tibetan group of languages.

Koro language has been discovered during an expedition as part of National Geographic's "Enduring Voices" project and, apparently, it counts for about 1,000 speakers. The group travelled to that remote region of India to investigate two little known tongues called Aka and Miji. At first, the linguists though that Koro was an Aka’s dialect. After further investigations, they concluded that it a different language with a distinct grammar.

The expedition leader, Dr David Harrison, said that the discovery is not rare said. Taking into consideration this new language, the number of recorded languages in the world rises to 6,910. Nevertheless, linguists estimate that a language becomes extinct every two weeks.

“Enduring Voices” is a project originated by National Geographic Mission Programs and the Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages. They aim to bring attention to the issue of language loss as well as prevent language extinction.