Episode 22 Siberian and Beyond: Languages Isolates

Language Families of the World

Dr John McWhorter

Film Review

Some languages belong to no known language families and are known as isolates. They are typically found in remote mountainous regions where people have little contact with the outside world.

Siberia

There are four regions in Siberia where residents speak languages unrelated to official language families:

• Chukotko-Kmchatkan – spoken by indigenous hunter-gatherers and reindeer-herders in extreme northeastern Siberia.
• Itelman – spoken in the Kmchatkan peninsula in the Russian Far East. Has ejective consonants also found in Native American languages (supporting theory that Native Americans migrated to North America via an sub-Arctic land bridge)  Siberia).

• Yukaghir – consists of two languages possibly related to Uralic languages (Finnish, Hungarian and Estonian) because pronouns are similar.
• Ket –  isolated to a few hundred speakers and linguists still haven’t figured out how Ket grammar works.

Basque (spoken in Pyrenees mountains on both sides French-Spanish border)

• has a grammar totally unlike any Indo-European language
• was spoken in province of Gascony (France) prior to Middle Ages
• trace Basque words across Europe suggests it was important indigenous language before being replaced by by Indo-European languages 2,000+ year ago.

Ainu

• spoken (only as second language) in northeast Russia, northern Japan and ilands north of Japan
• puts verb at end of sentences and uses lots of suffixes and possibly distantly related to Altaic languages (see Languages of the Silk Road and Beyond)
• known for orally communicated epic poems memorized by women rather than men

Somali – very complicated unwritten language renowned for oral epic poetry

Extinct Languages

Burushaski – extinct language spoken in Pakistan believed to be first written language

Sumerian – non-Semitic language spoken in region that became Mesopotamia

Etruscan

• non Indo-European language of Tyresenian family spoken in Northern Italy prior to development of Roman civilization
• used written language based on Greek alphabet
• responsible for numerous English words (eg military, column people, tuba and vagina)

https://www.kanopy.com/en/pukeariki/video/6120000/6120044