In Arunachal, a lost tongue found

Oct 06, 2010 - Lalit K. Jha |

Washington

A team of three linguists, two from National Geographic and one from Ranchi University on Tuesday claimed to have discovered a hitherto unknown language which is on the verge of extinction in remote Arunachal Pradesh.

The language, known as Koro, belongs to the Tibeto-Burman language family, a group of some 400 languages that includes Tibetan and Burmese, the linguists said during a teleconference here.
Although some 150 Tibeto-Burman languages are spoken in India alone, the National Geographic expedition team has been unable to identify any language closely related to Koro, so distinct is it from the others in the family.
The expedition was part of National Geographic’s Enduring Voices project, led by National Geographic Fellows Gregory Anderson and K. David Harrison; who were assisted by Indian linguist Ganesh Murmu of Ranchi University.
Before the expedition, the team had targeted Arunachal Pradesh as one of its “Language Hotspots”, a place on the world map that hosts a rich diversity of languages, many unwritten, that are little studied or documented.
“Koro brings an entirely different perspective, history, mythology, technology and grammar to what was known before,” Mr Harrison said. —PTI

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