Undocumented language found hidden in India

Undocumented language found hidden in India

[link to news.yahoo.com]

WASHINGTON – A "hidden" language spoken by only about 1,000 people has been discovered in the remote northeast corner of India by researchers who at first thought they were documenting a dialect of the Aka culture, a tribal community in the foothills of the Himalayas.

They found an entirely different vocabulary and linguistic structure.

Even the speakers of the tongue, called Koro, did not realize they had a distinct language, linguist K. David Harrison said Tuesday.

Culturally, the Koro speakers are part of the Aka community in India's Arunachal Pradesh state, and Harrison, associate professor of linguistics at Swarthmore College, said both groups merely considered Koro a dialect of the Aka language.