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This is a list of extinct languages of Asia , languages which have undergone language death, have no native speakers, and no spoken descendant.
There are 152 languages listed. 17 from Central Asia, 24 from East Asia, 16 from South Asia, 19 from Southeast Asia, 15 from Siberia and 61 from West Asia.
This is an incomplete list. You can help by adding missing items, correcting wrong information and adding reliable sources. (March 2024)
Language/dialect | Family | Date of extinction | Ethnic Group(s) | Native to |
---|---|---|---|---|
Ahom | Kra–Dai | [ data missing ] | Ahom | Assam |
Aka-Bea | Andamanese | 1931 AD [27] | Bea | western Andaman Strait and the northern and western coast of South Andaman |
Aka-Bo | Andamanese | February 2010 [28] | Bo | west central coast of the North Andaman and on the North Reef Island |
Aka-Cari | Andamanese | April 4, 2020 [29] | Cari | north coast of North Andaman and on Landfall Island |
Aka-Kede | Andamanese | 1930-1950s AD [27] | Aka-Kede | Southeast Middle Andaman |
Aka-Kol | Andamanese | 1921 AD [27] | Kol | Northern section of Middle Andaman |
Aka-Kora | Andamanese | 2004 AD [30] | Kora | northeast and north central coasts of North Andaman and Smith Island |
Akar-Bale | Andamanese | 1930-1950s AD [27] | Bale | Ritchie's Archipelago, Havelock Island and Neil Island |
Cochin Portuguese creole | Portuguese Creole | 20 August 2010 [31] | Cochin Portuguese Creole speakers | Kochi |
Dura | Sino-Tibetan | August 2008 [32] | Dura | Nepal |
Gandhari | Indo-European | 200s AD [33] | Gandhari people | Gandhara |
Jangil | Andamanese | 1905 AD [34] | Jangil | Rutland Island |
Lubanki | Indo-European | [ data missing ] | Labana | Punjab |
Moran | Sino-Tibetan | [ data missing ] | Morans | Assam |
Oko-Juwoi | Andamanese | 1931 AD [27] | Juwoi | west central and southwest interior of Middle Andaman |
Pucikwar | Andamanese | 1930-1950s AD [27] | Pucikwar | south coast of Middle Andaman, northeast coast of South Andaman and Baratang Island |
Arabic is a Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The ISO assigns language codes to 32 varieties of Arabic, including its standard form of Literary Arabic, known as Modern Standard Arabic, which is derived from Classical Arabic. This distinction exists primarily among Western linguists; Arabic speakers themselves generally do not distinguish between Modern Standard Arabic and Classical Arabic, but rather refer to both as al-ʿarabiyyatu l-fuṣḥā or simply al-fuṣḥā (اَلْفُصْحَىٰ).
The Italic languages form a branch of the Indo-European language family, whose earliest known members were spoken on the Italian Peninsula in the first millennium BC. The most important of the ancient languages was Latin, the official language of ancient Rome, which conquered the other Italic peoples before the common era. The other Italic languages became extinct in the first centuries AD as their speakers were assimilated into the Roman Empire and shifted to some form of Latin. Between the third and eighth centuries AD, Vulgar Latin diversified into the Romance languages, which are the only Italic languages natively spoken today, while Literary Latin also survived.
The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family—English, French, Portuguese, Russian, Dutch, and Spanish—have expanded through colonialism in the modern period and are now spoken across several continents. The Indo-European family is divided into several branches or sub-families, of which there are eight groups with languages still alive today: Albanian, Armenian, Balto-Slavic, Celtic, Germanic, Hellenic, Indo-Iranian, and Italic; another nine subdivisions are now extinct.
The Turkic languages are a language family of more than 35 documented languages, spoken by the Turkic peoples of Eurasia from Eastern Europe and Southern Europe to Central Asia, East Asia, North Asia (Siberia), and West Asia. The Turkic languages originated in a region of East Asia spanning from Mongolia to Northwest China, where Proto-Turkic is thought to have been spoken, from where they expanded to Central Asia and farther west during the first millennium. They are characterized as a dialect continuum.
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Kannada, formerly also known as Canarese, is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly by the people of Karnataka in southwestern India, with minorities in all neighbouring states. It has around 44 million native speakers, and is additionally a second or third language for around 15 million non-native speakers in Karnataka.
The Anatolian languages are an extinct branch of Indo-European languages that were spoken in Anatolia, part of present-day Turkey. The best known Anatolian language is Hittite, which is considered the earliest-attested Indo-European language.
Knaanic is a tentative name for a number of West Slavic dialects or registers formerly spoken by the Jews in the lands of the Western Slavs, notably the Czech lands, but also the lands of modern Poland, Lusatia, and other Sorbian regions. They became extinct in the Late Middle Ages. Very little is known about their difference from the surrounding Slavic languages. The largest number of samples of Knaanic written in Hebrew script are in Czech; therefore, most commonly Knaanic is associated with Old Czech.
An endangered language or moribund language is a language that is at risk of disappearing as its speakers die out or shift to speaking other languages. Language loss occurs when the language has no more native speakers and becomes a "dead language". If no one can speak the language at all, it becomes an "extinct language". A dead language may still be studied through recordings or writings, but it is still dead or extinct unless there are fluent speakers. Although languages have always become extinct throughout human history, they are currently dying at an accelerated rate because of globalization, mass migration, cultural replacement, imperialism, neocolonialism and linguicide.
The Andamanese languages are the languages spoken by the indigenous Andamanese peoples of the Andaman Islands in the Indian Ocean. It contains two known language families, Great Andamanese and Ongan, as well as two presumed but unattested languages, Sentinelese and Jangil.
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Ancient Semitic-speaking peoples or Proto-Semitic people were speakers of Semitic languages who lived throughout the ancient Near East and North Africa, including the Levant, Mesopotamia, the Arabian Peninsula and Carthage from the 3rd millennium BC until the end of antiquity, with some, such as Arabs, Arameans, Assyrians, Jews, Mandaeans, and Samaritans having a continuum into the present day.
The evolution of languages or history of language includes the evolution, divergence and development of languages throughout time, as reconstructed based on glottochronology, comparative linguistics, written records and other historical linguistics techniques. The origin of language is a hotly contested topic, with some languages tentatively traced back to the Paleolithic. However, archaeological and written records extend the history of language into ancient times and the Neolithic.
The Libyco-Berber alphabet or the Libyc alphabet is an abjad writing system that was used during the first millennium BC by various Berber peoples of North Africa and the Canary Islands, to write ancient varieties of the Berber language like the Numidian language in ancient North Africa.
1200 - 800 BC.
13th century AD.
from the 13th century until the 19th century
István Varró, a member of the Jász-Cuman mission to the empress of Austria Maria Theresa and the known last speaker of the Cuman language, died in 1770.
This lect is the descendant of the Fergana Kipchak language that went extinct in the late 1920's.
11th to 12th centuries AD.
6th - 12th century AD.
100 BC - 1000 AD.
Andreev explains that 100 years ago there was an ancient Vanji language used by people of Vanj valley. He then provides as example that in 1925, when travelling to Vanj Valley, him and his travel companion met an old man who told that, when he was 11 years old, he was speaking Vanji language. Unfortunately, the old man could remember only 20-30 words, but even then, he was not sure if they were all correct.
... "Two ... Wot (Wotapuri - Katarqalai). Of the latter we can witness how the process of extinction has moved on inexorably in the course of the twentieth century. In the 1940's Morgenstierne reported that Wot was spoken in two villages in the Katar valley, one at Wotapuri at the confluence of the Pech river with the streams coming from the valley, one further up the valley in Katarqalai. 15 years later Budruss (1960) visited both villages found no speakers of the language in the lower village, Pashto having completely replaced it, and in the upper one only a few passive speakers who remember having spoken the language in their earlier years.
1st century to mid-8th century A.D.
100 BC - 1000 AD.
c. 7th - 10th centuries AD.
Pazeh, an Austronesian language of Taiwan thought to have lost its last speaker in 2010.
the Khüis Tolgoi inscription must have been erected between 604 and 620 AD.
Siraya is a Formosan language spoken until the end of the 19th century by the indigenous Siraya people of Taiwan.
c. 11th - 16th centuries AD.
5th to 10th centuries AD.
7th - 10th century AD.
... The Aka-Kol tribe of Middle Andaman became extinct by 1921. The Oko-Juwoi of Middle Andaman and the Aka-Bea of South Andaman and Rutland Island were extinct by 1931. The Akar-Bale of Ritchie's Archipelago, the Aka-Kede of Middle Andaman and the A-Pucikwar of South Andaman Island soon followed. By 1951, the census counted a total of only 23 Greater Andamanese and 10 Sentinelese. That means that just ten men, twelve women and one child remained of the Aka-Kora, Aka-Cari and Aka-Jeru tribes of Greater Andaman and only ten natives of North Sentinel Island ...
... the Kharosthi script was used as a literary medium, that is, from the time of Asoka in the middle of the third century B.C. until about the third century A.D.
The last speaker of the Leliali dialect died in 1989
...the language, along with its speakers, was lost in a gigantic volcanic eruption, the most cataclysmic in historic times in April 1815.
...that was spoken in Bidau, an eastern suburb of Dili, East Timor until the 1960s
Survived until the 18th century AD.
Survived until perhaps the 18th century AD.
Unfortunately, Kuril Ainu, which is absolutely indispensable for the reconstruction, disappeared in the late 19th century with just few old documents left.
Survived until perhaps 18th century.
including Kott/Assan, Arin, Pumpokol, all extinct between about 1800 and 1860
In 1994, Take Asai died at the age of 102. She was the last native speaker of Sakhalin Ainu
Yurats was another Samoyedic language replaced by the eastward advance of Tundra Nenets, extinct during the nineteenth century, with meager documentation
6th-8th Centuries AD.
The echoes of native Cappadocian could be heard into the sixth century and perhaps beyond.
1st-2nd centuries AD.
7th to 3rd centuries BC.
Dadanitic was the alphabet used by the inhabitants of the ancient oasis of Dadan, probably some time during the second half of the first millennium BC.
According to the Assyrian annals Dūma was the seat of successive queens of the Arabs, some of whom were also priestesses, in the eighth and seventh centuries BC.
3rd Millenium BC.
Earlier half of the 1st Millennium BC.
They are thought to date from the first two centuries AD.
2nd Millennium BC.
i.e. first century BC to fourth century AD
The Kaška first appear on the territory of the Hittite empire in the 15th c. B.C. and are mentioned till 8th c. B.C.
2nd-1st Millennium BC.
500 BC to about 200 BC.
8th to ? 3rd century BC.
Even towards the end of the Mamluk period, during the reign of the last sultan al-Ghawri (1501-1516), the Mamluk, called Asanbay min Sudun, copied the religious Hanbali tract of Abu al-Layth in Kypchak language for the royal library.
100 BC - 600 AD.
Ibrahim Ḥanna was the last speaker of the Mlaḥso language, as the village was destroyed in 1915 during the Armenian genocide. He died in 1999 in Qāmišli in Syria
... no tablets or any other inscribed vessels were found from ca. 1200 BC onwards.
It continued to be spoken until the 15th century AD, developing ultimately into the Turkish varieties of later years.
2nd Millennium BC.
The earliest dated Palmyrene inscription is from the year 44 BC and the latest discovery has been dated to the year 274 AD.
100 BC - 600 AD.
A minority of dated texts suggest that the practice of carving Safaitic inscriptions spanned at least from the second century BCE to the third century CE.
Therefore, at least part of the Taymanitic corpus can safely be dated to the second half of the 6th century BCE.
These inscriptions are concentrated in northwest Arabia, and one occurs alongside a Nabataean tomb inscription dated to the year 267 CE.
Ist Millennium BC.