Languages New to Science

Linguists analyzing the little-known languages of Aka and Miji—spoken in India’s northeastern state Arunachal Pradesh, bordering Bhutan and China—detected a third local tongue, which is known as Koro. “This is a language that had been undocumented, completely unrecognized, and unrecorded,” said researcher Gregory Anderson, director of the Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages. Koro had eluded detection because it is spoken by only about 800 people in an area to which travel is restricted. During 2009, 24 languages were identified in an area of China where just one had previously been reported.