An article for all of us language nerds here at DI. FUndocumented language found hidden in India The LOL moment of the article: Children beware, the Hindi language is coming to a neighborhood near you!!!
reminds me of an old George Carlin joke "Scientists have discovered a new disease which has no known symptoms. It is impossible to detect and there is no known cure. Fortunately no cases have been reported thus far."
I don't understand why the threat that Hindi poses to the survival of this obscure language is perceived as funny. The situation is probably inevitable though, however unintentional it might be. Young people, educated at government schools, will choose to use Hindi (spoken across India) or English (spoken around the world) in preference to a language that's spoken in only a few remote mountain villages. So the day will come when the only people capable of speaking the local language are a few elderly people. And after that, the language will only exist as some sound recordings and linguists' notes. We've seen the same thing happen repeatedly here in the US as American Indian languages go extinct.
Wait, wait, I remember this from elementary school. We can save American Indian languages by reusing paper, right? Or was that the way to save whales? ***This joke was brought to you by the letters M and C***
A previously unknown langauge was also recently discovered in Peru (but no longer spoken by anyone): Traces of a Lost Peruvian Language Discovered | American Archaeologist
