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The Algonquian languages are a subfamily of indigenous American languages that include most languages in the Algic language family. The name of the Algonquian language family is distinguished from the orthographically similar Algonquin dialect of the Indigenous Ojibwe language (Chippewa), which is a senior member of the Algonquian language family. The term Algonquin has been suggested to derive from the Maliseet word elakómkwik, "they are our relatives/allies". A number of Algonquian languages are considered extinct languages by the modern linguistic definition.
A wide variety of languages are spoken throughout Asia, comprising different language families and some unrelated isolates. The major language families include Austroasiatic, Austronesian, Caucasian, Dravidian, Indo-European, Afroasiatic, Turkic, Sino-Tibetan and Kra–Dai. Most, but not all, have a long history as a written language.
An extinct language is a language that no longer has any speakers, especially if the language has no living descendants. In contrast, a dead language is one that is no longer the native language of any community, even if it is still in use, like Latin. A dormant language is a dead language that still serves as a symbol of ethnic identity to a particular group. These languages are often undergoing a process of revitalisation. Languages that currently have living native speakers are sometimes called modern languages to contrast them with dead languages, especially in educational contexts.
The Chapacuran languages are a nearly extinct Native American language family of South America. Almost all Chapacuran languages are extinct, and the four that are extant are moribund. They are spoken in Rondônia in the southern Amazon Basin of Brazil and in northern Bolivia.
An unclassified language is a language whose genetic affiliation to other languages has not been established. Languages can be unclassified for a variety of reasons, mostly due to a lack of reliable data but sometimes due to the confounding influence of language contact, if different layers of its vocabulary or morphology point in different directions and it is not clear which represents the ancestral form of the language. Some poorly known extinct languages, such as Gutian and Cacán, are simply unclassifiable, and it is unlikely the situation will ever change.
Barbacoan is a language family spoken in Colombia and Ecuador.
Many Australian Aboriginal cultures have or traditionally had a manually coded language, a signed counterpart of their oral language. This appears to be connected with various speech taboos between certain kin or at particular times, such as during a mourning period for women or during initiation ceremonies for men, as was also the case with Caucasian Sign Language but not Plains Indian Sign Language, which did not involve speech taboo, or deaf sign languages, which are not encodings of oral language. There is some similarity between neighboring groups and some contact pidgin similar to Plains Indian Sign Language in the American Great Plains.
Arawan is a family of languages spoken in western Brazil and Peru (Ucayali).
The Darwin Region languages are a small family of poorly attested Australian Aboriginal languages of northern Australia proposed by linguist Mark Harvey. It unites the pair of Limilngan languages with two language isolates:
The Central Maluku languages are a proposed subgroup of the Central–Eastern Malayo-Polynesian branch of the Austronesian language family which comprises around fifty languages spoken principally on the Seram, Buru, Ambon, Kei, and the Sula Islands. None of the languages have as many as fifty thousand speakers, and several are extinct.
The Murring–Kuric languages are a family of mainly extinct Australian Aboriginal languages that existed in the south east of Australia.
Cañari and Puruhá are two poorly-attested extinct languages of the Marañón River basin in Ecuador that are difficult to classify. Puruhá is scarcely attested, and Cañari is known primarily from placenames. Loukotka (1968) suggests they may have been related instead to Mochica (Yunga) in a family called Chimuan, but Adelaar (2004:397) thinks it is more likely that they were Barbacoan languages.
The East Kainji languages are spoken in a compact area of the Jos Plateau in Nigeria, near Jos. There are more than 20 of them, most of which are poorly studied.
Zire (Sîshëë), also known as Nerë, is an extinct Oceanic language of New Caledonia. It has been extinct since April 2006. Zire is sometimes considered a dialect of Ajië.
Unubahe (Unuba'e) is a nearly extinct Oceanic language spoken at the southeastern tip of Papua New Guinea. Although a few children speak it, in 2001 there was only one married couple who both spoke the language.
The Cai–Long or Ta–Li languages are a group of Sino-Tibetan languages spoken in western Guizhou, China. Only Caijia is still spoken, while Longjia and Luren are extinct. The branch was first recognized by Chinese researchers in the 1980s, with the term Cai–Long first mentioned in Guizhou.
References
- ↑ Jouni Filip Maho, 2009. New Updated Guthrie List Online
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