#language isolate

Ethnonyms: Nivkh, Nivkhi, Gilyak, Gilia, Gilyaks, Nivkhgu, Nʼivxgu, Nighvng, Nʼiɣvŋgun, Fiaka, Fiyaka

Total population: 3,842

Ethnolinguistic classification: Nivkh

Homeland: the Amur River

Regions with significant populations: Sakhalin Oblast, the Nikolayevsky District

Languages and dialects: Russian, Nivkh, Amur, West Sakhalin, North Sakhalin, East Sakhalin, South Sakhalin

Religion: Nivkh shamanism, the Russian Orthodox Church

Related ethnic groups: Ainu, Uilta (Orok), Nanai, Oroch, Ewenki, indigenous peoples of the Amur–Sakhalin region

Japan is an ethnically homogenous nation where everyone speaks Japanese, right? Not exactly. Other groups including the Ainu also have called Japan home, perhaps for longer than the Japanese themselves. Today, the Ainu language is spoken by only a handful of people. One of them, Russian-born linguist Anna Bugaeva, takes Patrick Cox to meet Ainu speakers (and non-speakers) on the island of Hokkaido. Along the way, we learn about the mysteries of Ainu, a “language isolate” unrelated to any other language in the world. Bugaeva says Japanese children aren’t taught about the Ainu because their presence—and language—contradict standard Japanese history.

Kusunda (Kusanda, mihaq) is a language spoken by the Kusunda people in Nepal. It was originally thought to have died in 1985. But 2004, 3 speakers were discovered and most of the documentation we have today results from intense work with them. They belong to the ethnic group of Kusunda or Ban Raja, which is translated as “The Kings of the Forest”. It is an exonym, given by outsiders and not themselves, and it points to the fact that many Kusundas live in the forest. They have no problems with the term “Kusunda” (while in some regions of India it is used as an insult) but they refer to themselves as “mihaq” the peoples. Nowadays, there are only 160 ethnic Kusundas left. Of the 3 remaining speakers, none is monolingual, all of them also use Nepali. They all married outside their ethnic group and no child is raised in this language anymore, making Kusunda a moribund language. While most speakers vary widely in their fluency, Gyani Maiyi Sen is the most famous speaker and the most fluent if not only native one, she often gets referred to as the last speaker. (She is depicted in this video.)

The interesting thing about Kusunda is, while earlier researchers thought of it as a Tibeto-Burman variety, it is now evident that it is a language isolate, thus, not related to any other known language. It is probably the last remnant of languages that were spoken before the Tibeto-Burman and Indo-Iranian languages came to that region and it is not related to the Munda or Dravidian languages. The groundwork was laid by David Watters 2005 when he published the workings from the intense working with the three remaining speakers in a Kusunda grammar, which offers grammatical, typological and vocabulary insights. 

Kusunda Phonology

Kusunda hat some interesting features: - It has six vowels that oppose each other in vowel harmonies, making them phonologically only three phonemes. Normally, only /i, ə, u/ or only /e, a, o/ can be together in one word. Theoretically, one set could be replaced by the other set without changing the meaning. - Kusunda is phonologically very distinct to its surroundings: It has uvular and pharyngealized consonants that don’t appear in neighbouring languages, and while retroflex consonants are prevalent in that region they don’t occur in Kusunda. - While English contrasts sounds by the place of articulation and the articulator, in Kusunda, mostly only the active articulator is of importance. So, it wouldn’t matter where the tip of the tongue (apical consonants) produces a sound, but only that it is done by it. Throughout the words, one would find apical consonants that are dental, alveolar, retroflex and palatal without changing the meaning. Even voicing, like the difference between /p/ and /b/, seems to play a minor role, as does aspiration, and many sounds can be stops here and fricatives there.

Kusunda Grammar

Very strikingly and highly unique among the world’s languages is the way Kusunda distinguishes between marked and unmarked structures. Irrealis would be a marked feature in comparison to the unmarked realis, same goes for negativity versus affirmation and other features. Normally, languages would make use of affixes or other means to denote these structures. Kusunda however, deploys a harmonic autosegmental process (often called mutation) that applies to the whole word. An apical consonant would then shift to a laminal consonant, a velar consonant to a uvular one and the first set of vowels would change to the second one, in order to mark the irrealis in contrast to the realis of the negativity in contrast to the affirmative modus. Here is an example: If you say “I go” you would apply the realis because it is present time. The form would be /ts-əg-ən/, but if you want to say “I will go” you have to use the irrealis and thus change the consonants’ articulator: /tʃ-aɢʕ-an/ - as you see, the velar /g/ of the root becomes uvular /ɢʕ/ (among the other changes) and is thus marking the irrealis by mutation.

Verbs are roughly divided into two groups. Class I gets personal prefixes and numeral suffixes: First persons are indicated by /t-/ or /ts-/, second persons by /n-/ and the third persons by /g-/ or others. The singular is indicated by the suffix /-Vn/ (V stands for a vowel) and the plural by the suffix /-da-/ that comes directly after the root and is followed by /-n/. So, you can distinguish “I eat” (t-əm-ən) from “You eat” (n-əm-ən), or “I eat” (t-əm-ən) from “We eat” (t-əm-da-n). The prefixes also resemble the first consonants of the personal pronouns a lot, which are /tsi/ and /tok/ for the 1. P. Sg. & Pl., /nu/ and /nok/ for the 2. P. Sg. & Pl. and /gina/ for the 3. P. which has no distinction between plural or singular. The verbs from Class I are few in number and highly irregular.

Most verbs are in Class II, which differ in a lot of features from Class I verbs. If the verb is transitive, the conjugated forms of “I made, we made, you made, etc.” come after the verb root. So, if you want to put the verb “to buy” /dza/ in the first person singular you add /a-t-n̩/  which simply means “I made” > dza-a-t-n̩ (I made buying). If the verb is intransitive, you simply add the personal pronoun after the root and add a /-n/. From “to enter” /sip/ you would simply come to “I enter” by adding /tsi/ and /-n/ > /sip-tsi-n/. 

That is just a peek into the grammar, there are a lot of very interesting and unique features that Kusunda has to offer and it is definitely worth a further look into the grammar David Watters wrote.

Kusunda Phrases

The Australian National University in Canberra has some very good resources on Kusunda on their website. If you want to hear the sound files to the following phrases or other sentences or even texts, visit this website. 

Sodzaq! - Greetings! (hello or goodbye) Tsi gidzi Gyani Maiya - My name is Gyani Maiya Tsi tugun - I've come (I'm here) Nəti? - Who (is it)? Nu wee? - Are you well? Nətn nitn? - What did you say? Hampena nugun? - Where have you come from? Ni whi hampe? - Where is your house? Tsi whi Kulmor - My house is in Kulmore Garaw əni - It's hot Idang ugun - I'm hungry Pəwhəiran əni - I'm tired Aw təgəi! - Let's go! Hana nyhaan? - Where are you going? Kafera muitsidaq - We'll meet again 

Gyani Maiya’s words about the language loss: Ta gepən mi: əndzi - This language is going to be lost. Nətima gepən ədu - There is none to talk with. Mjaqa tsi toqdu ta qau nətn ba - I am alone and if I died, then there is nothing. Ləmbə ədi ta nəti ləmbə əgəndzi - Though I am ready to teach, is there anyone to learn? Toqdu bela ənin jiodze gepən əgu ta ləmbə əgu ta we: da - It would be better if they learnt since I am very old now.

Kusunda sources

See for further linguistic material the link to Glottolog and check the links under the Wikipedia article or the Links page of the ANU Kusunda Linguistics article.

Language isolates in North America (2/2) : Atlantic coast and central

Coahuilteco (white) : Amongst all the Native American languages that have been recorded, Coahuilteco is one of the poorest documented. The language has been extinct since at least the 18th century. The drastic lack of information concerning Coahuilteco stems from the fact that the Spaniards did not really pay heed to the speakers of the language. For instance, the estimation of the period around which the language went extinct comes from the lack of written mentions around that time. It was never clearly said that the Native Americans went extinct for a particular reason and when this happened. Consequently, most of the available info we garnered today was from studies once the ethnic group and the language ceased to exist. It was once wagered that the whole of south-eastern Texas was teeming with numerous Coahuilteco speakers but is now hypothesised that it was merely a widespread L2. Linguists are running short of details as to the grammar, the number of L1 speakers and if there were dialects. Since it is hardly feasible to classify Cohuilteco into a language family, it is thought of as an isolate.

Zuni (light purple): Zuni (also spelt Zuñi) is still spoken today in New Mexico and Arizona by 9 686 people according to a census conducted between 2006 and 2010. This is a slight increase since the previous census in 2000 which found 9 650 speakers. There are very few monolinguals of Zuni; many Zuni people speak perfectly English. Ethnologue reports that more than 7 000 people (more than 72%) use Zuni at home. The language is used at home, in traditional tribal council meetings, in all religious ceremonies, and occasionally in religious services. Many efforts have been made to try and find a place for Zuni in pre-existing language families but these efforts have been fruitless. Most common points between Zuni and other geographically close languages are mainly about shared vocabulary and phonemes (specifically ejective phonemes) but it is most commonly accepted that these lexical and phonological features are but mere borrowings from surrounding tongues.

Tonkawa (blue) : Tonkawa has been gone since the 20th century, estimations have it at around the 1940s. Tonkawa has been replaced today by English in the Tonkawa tribes but the language is fortunately well recorded, whether it is its phonology or grammar. Tonkawa has a taboo phenomenon remarkably close that of the Kwaio language in the Solomon Islands. Words would fall out of use because of the taboo associated the sonority of a words and that of a deceased member of the tribe. This would cause a need for a new word to express a familiar concept. This is why the vocabulary that Chowell lay down on paper in 1829 was pretty different from the one that Hoijer got a century later. For instance, the words for “beard” or “eyes” had differed in the span of a century because in 1892, 167 Tonkawas were killed in a massacre. 

Atakapa (brown): Atakapa is also an extinct isolate. It was spoken in the Gulf of Mexico region. Although divided in several bands, Atakapan speakers were never numerous to begin with. Regarding dialects, there are conflicting reports when it comes to their number. There might have been two or three. John R. Swanton (1929:122)  indicates though that there were most probably three dialects based on the words and sentences collected from different bands. Nothing is sure. The decline of the Atakapan is mostly due to the growing numbers of settlements from Americans after the Louisiana was sold by the French in the late 18th century. After the Louisiana Purchase, the Atakapan either retreated in the hinterlands or stayed close by. Their numbers dwindled up to the point of reaching 0 in the early 20th century. 

Chitimacha (light orange): This language is officially extinct. However, reality is more complex than that since there have been since in the 1990s great endeavours to revitalise the Chitimacha tongue. There has been a partnership between “[the tribe and] the software company Rosetta Stone on a two-year project to create computer software for learning the language, which today every registered tribal member has a copy of.” Ethnologue makes no mention of the reservation’s school, set in Louisiana, where kids actually exchange in the language. Although not all Chitimacha speak the language, amongst the 1300 members (according to their website), the language is still alive today. Proof: kids learning the language actually come up with slang words. Chitimacha could have never come back from its 60-year-long slumber after the death of its last two speakers: Benjamin Paul and Delphine Ducloux. They were the last speakers and died in the 1930s but not before Morris Swadesh dedicated two years of life to gathering the words and myths that Ben and Delphine had inherited from their ancestors. It was based on these records that the revitilsation effort of Chitimacha is working.

Natchez (green): Native to Mississippi , Natchez belongs to the long list of extinct language in North America. Natchez went extinct with the death of Watt Sam in 1944 and his cousin Nancy Raven in 1957. The Natchez people dissolved into the neighbouring the communities after the Natchez chiefdom was destroyed in the 1730s by the French. The Natchez people assimilated into other tribes which had the impact of creating bilingual speakers which eventually had the sad consequence of relegating the Natchez language to a distant memory since the language was no longer needed. The early 1900s saw linguists John R. Swanton (in 1907) and Mary R. Haas (in the 1930s) work with these two speakers. One of the only voice recordings of Natchez on wax cylinders of Watt Sam and is kept at the University of Michigan. One of the most remarkable features of Natchez lies in its phonology; particularly the voicing contrast that is applied to its sonorants (namely /m̥ m/, /n̥ n/, /l̥ l/ and /w̥ w/) and not to its obstruents as it is most common. Linguists have tried to link Natchez to the Muskogean languages but the proposal has yet to convince a majority of linguists. 

Tunica (red): Tunica is in effect a dead language, it was spoken in Mississippi, Louisiana, and Arkansas. However, there have been initiatives that aimed at breathing life back into it. Fortunately, as the Tunica tribe website indicates, thanks to these efforts, there are now around 60 speakers ranging from beginner to intermediate level. “ In 2010, the tribe partnered with the Tulane University Linguistics Program, Department of Anthropology, to start the Tunica Language Project. In an effort to re-awaken the Tunica language, plans were put in place to work with the tribal community to bring the language back.” Tunica had become dormant since the 1950s after the death of Sesostrie Youchigant but not before he worked with linguist Mary Haas to describe what he remembered of the language, which he had learned as a child.    

Yuchi (purple): Yuchi’s fire is burning ever so dimly. The language had, in 2012, 5 L1 speakers, who were at least 80 years old at the time, according to a video on their YouTube channel. As of 2017, it seems that there only three of them remaining as one passed away in 2013 and another one in 2016. Despite dwindling numbers there is still some hope as there has been since 1994 a Yuchi Language Project, notably with language classes or Annual Yuchi Knowledge Bowl. The language was native to the Tennessee and later Georgia regions before being forcibly moved to Oklahoma, following the passage of the Indian Removal Act in 1830. An event that was also called the Trail of Tears. It is claimed that Yuchi is distantly related to the Siouan family but nothing is sure. 

Timucua (orange): Timucua has disappeared since the turn of the 19th century. The tribe had thin ranks by 1700, around 1000 of them and the conflicts with and enslavement by English colonists and other warring tribes had completed their eradication by the time the USA acquired Florida. A Spanish member of clergy, Father Pareja, recorded in his 31 years of service 9 to 10 different dialects.