Scientists broadcast finding koro, a new dialect

When a living language that had been unknown to the rest of the globe is found by science, humanity triumphs. Once discovered, there’s a brief window of opportunity that scientists have to record this human discovery. The Wall Street Journal accounts that National Geographic “Enduring Voices” scientists are going through that process right now with koro, a dialect talked by a mere 800 people within the northeastern India state of Arunachal Pradesh.

Koro within the foothills in the Himalayas

English Romantic poet Taylor Coleridge once wrote that “Language is the armory of the human mind, and at once contains the trophies of its past and the weapons of its future conquest.” There’s a good chance Coleridge knew the importance of his words. This is because history has so many conquered people and dead languages in it.

In the Arunachal Pradesh region of India, koro was found in a dozen hunter-gatherer villages by two researchers. More than 120 languages are spoken in the state. Koro is “quite distinct on each and every level — the sound, the words (and) the sentence structure.” That is what Dr. Gregory Anderson of the Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Dialects explained. Koro deals with reality in ways very different than English. Anderson explains that no “major” world language is able to translate the elements in the natural world of koro. Koro does not have a written form. Dissemination is harder because of this.

Further details of koro can be published soon in the journal Indian Linguistics.

7,000 dialects are known on earth at present

Before the 21st century is over, about half of the 7,000 known languages on the earth will die, according to experts. Thousands of languages have already died. This is what human history indicators tell us. It is also estimated that the last recognized fluent speaker of a dialect dies each two weeks, writes the WSJ. Hindi and English are the talked dialect at school the majority of the time. This means koro will likely die off soon as well.

Citations

Wall Street Journal

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703843804575534122591921594.html