thursday 13: endangered languages

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I’m a language nerd. It started young, with French and Latin. Then I became a Polish, then Vietnamese, linguist in the US Army, learning to read German along the way. Since then, I’ve studied Swedish, more German, and dabbled in Spanish. So yeah, nerd. All of those are fairly prevalent languages, but there are many in danger of fading away into obscurity. According to UNESCO, there are historically 8,235 languages spoken or signed, with roughly 7000 still in active use. Here are some of the most endangered, in no particular order.

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1. Khanty (aka Hanti)

estimated speakers: less than 10,000
region of the world: Western Siberia

This language has three main dialects: Northern, Eastern, and Southern. The latter has been extinct since the early 20th century, and the majority of remaining Khanty speakers fall into the Northern dialect. Interestingly, the three dialects are so mutually unintelligible that many linguists consider them to be separate languages altogether. Khanty is based on the evidentiality system of linguisticsA grammar system that tells the listener/reader how the information being imparted was sourced. In other words, the grammar used shows whether the speaker experienced the information first- or secondhand. Further, the grammar can also show how the information was gleaned: visual, auditory, reported by someone else, inferred (gleaned through reasoning/deduction), or assumed In Khanty, a simpler two-term version of evidentiality is used, based solely on the source of information.

2. Chung (aka Sa’och)

estimated speakers: approximately 10
region of the world: Cambodia

This is one of 19 languages in Cambodia that is endangered. It is spoken only in a small village. “Sa’och” is actually considered by speakers of Chung as a derogatory term, a Khmer term that means “scarlet fever” or “pimply,” and so use only Chung to describe themselves and the language. In large part, the decimation of the language is the fault of the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s. The communist regime forced the Chung people into labor camps, then refused them their own language, culture, and religion. Sadly, their culture and language has been denigrated even by their own remaining people, so there has been little care to save the language.

3. Ongoto

estimated speakers: approximately 10
region of the world: Southwest Ethiopia

This is another language that is highly endangered, spoken only by a handful of elders. The language is dying out due to the marriage of Ongota men into the Ts’amakko tribe. Ts’amakko mothers teach their children Tsamai, but the Ongota fathers do not pass on their own language, as most of these men stopped speaking it themselves due to the scorn they would be subjected to by the Ts’amakko tribe, as the Ongota are looked down upon by the former as the Ongota tribe subsists as hunter-gatherers, with no cattle, which carries a lack of prestige. Even the few that still do speak the language tend to code-switchwhen speakers alternate between two languages or dialects within the same conversation, with Tsamai being the dominant language.

4. Njerep

estimated speakers: approximately 6
region of the world: Somié, a Mambila village along the Nigeria-Cameroon border

Even 6 is an optimistic number, as those that remain with a knowledge of the language are not even semi-fluent, more rememberers of it. They have only a few words and sentences, used mostly for greetings, jokes, songs, and secret sharing. This optimistic estimate is probably conflated, as documentation in 2000 shared that by the late 1990s, only four people used the language regularly at home, and only one of those people, an elder, could efficiently converse in it. It is believed that the last fully fluent speaker died in 1988.

5. Paunaka

estimated speakers: approximately 9
region of the world: Chiquitania, Bolivia

This is a language forced into near-extinction by Spanish colonization. It is one of many indigenous languages throughout South America displaced and replaced by Spanish, as well as Chiquitano in this area. Younger generations, both in school and at home, concentrate on Spanish, leaving their original languages behind. But, while there are only a few fluent speakers, there is a larger number of people that can understand the language, at least in part, if not speak it themselves.

6. Záparo

estimated speakers: approximately 1-9
region of the world: Pastaza Province, Ecuador

It is estimated that only 1-9 people out of a population of 170 still have fluency in this language. Most of the Záparo people now speak Quichua, although there is currently a push to revive the language. Historically, the Záparo were one of the largest ethnic groups in western Amazonia, with numbers well over 100,000. But the group began to decrease in number for two main reasons, both as a result of European colonization. Part of it was due to the diseases brought by Europeans, and another part was due to wars with other Amazonia peoples fighting for territory because of European encroachment. The latter continued to occur with the rubber boom in the area, in the early part of the 20th century. Like many other Amazonian peoples, they were all but enslaved and used as cheap labor within the rubber industry.

7. Krymchak

estimated speakers: less than 1000
region of the world: parts of Crimea, Russia, Israel, United States

This is the language of the Krymchak people, a community of Jewish immigrants from Asia and all over Europe. The language is similar to Crimean Tatar, with a heavy Hebrew influence. Before the Soviet era, prior to the early 1920s, the language was written with Hebrew characters. In the 1930s, within the Soviet Union, it began to be written with the Uniform Turkic Alphabet. Today, it is written with the Cyrillic alphabet. But during the 20th century, it began to be replaced by Russian. Its use was also affected by the demise of roughly 70% of the Krymchak population during the Holocaust. Today, less than 800 Krymchak people remain in Crimea, and of the 1500-2000 living abroad, less than ten are native speakers.

8. Araki

estimated speakers: less than 10
region of the world: Araki Island, Vanuatu

This is an Oceanic language that is slowly being replaced by Tangoa, a language from a neighboring island in the region. By 2012, there were an estimated 8 remaining native speakers, with the rest of the island having the ability to understand it but a limited ability to speak it. Even among the native speakers, a large amount of Araki vocabulary and grammar has long since been lost.

9. Kallawaya (Pohena)

estimated speakers: less than 100
region of the world: Bolivia within Charazani, the highlands north of Lake Titicaca, Tipuani

This is an interesting language, often classed a secret, mixed language. It is mixed in that the grammar is at least partially Quechua, but the vocabulary is from unknown languages as well as the extinct language family Pukina. It is considered secret because it is passed only from father to son, or grandfather to grandson. It is only passed to daughters/granddaughters if a speaker has no male descendants. The language is used primarily as a ritual language among men, used secretly. But it can also be used for everyday conversation among those in the know.

10. Tanacross (Transitional Tanana)

estimated speakers: less than 60
region of the world: Alaska, mostly in Tanacross but also in Fairbanks and Tok

This language is tan Athabaskan language that is rapidly losing its speakers, as are most others of the language group. Most children have a passive understanding of it, but the majority of fluent speakers are 50 or older. Even in that group, only among the oldest is it the everyday language. It is estimated that there are less than 65 speakers out of a population of about 220. This is actually quite a high percentage for an Alaska Athabaskan language, as most of the others have a far lower percentage. There has been an increase in revitalization efforts since the 1990s.

11. Ugong

estimated speakers: less than 100
region of the world: western Thailand

Ugong began its decline in the 1920s, with it becoming extinct in two of its original locations by the 1970s. The populace of those villages were forced out by the Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand, so that dams could be built over two local rivers. The last children to learn the language were Gen Xers of the 1970s with children to learn Thai today. While there are roughly 500 ethnically Ugong people, only approximately 50 speakers of their language remain.

12. Paakantyi 

estimated speakers: less than 10
region of the world: along the Darling River in New South Wales

This is a nearly extinct Australian Aboriginal language spoken by communities along the Darling River. In 2012, a report stated that only two people could speak the language fluently. But the 2021 census showed that more than one hundred people reported speaking Paakantyi at home. This shows that there is a revitalization effort to increase the speaking population.

13. a collection of single-speaker languages

According to UNESCO, there are 18 languages with only one speaker.

• Brazil: Apiaká, Diahói, Kaixána
• Cameroon: Bikya, Bishuo
• Vanuatu: Volow
• Argentina: Chaná 
• Venezuela: Pémono 
• Peru: Taushiro
• Chile: Yahgan
• Columbia: Tinigua
• Indonesia: Dampelas
• USA: Patwin, Tolowa, Wintu-Nomlaki
• Papua New Guinea:  Lae, Yarawi, Laua