List of Oral Language Isolates By Continent
Below is a list of known language isolates, arranged by continent, along with notes on possible relations to other languages or language families.
- In the Status column, "vibrant" means that a language is in full use by the community and being acquired as a first language by children. "Moribund" means that a language is still spoken, but only by older people; it is not being acquired by children, and without efforts to revive it will become extinct when current speakers die. "Extinct" means a language is no longer spoken. The terms "living" and "endangered" are defined by the classification of "Language Types" in ISO 639-3; "vibrant" is equivalent to "living" or sometimes "endangered" in ISO, depending on efforts to preserve the language, and "moribund" is "endangered" in ISO.
Read more about this topic: Language Isolate
Famous quotes containing the words list of, list, oral, language, isolates and/or continent:
“The advice of their elders to young men is very apt to be as unreal as a list of the hundred best books.”
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (1841–1935)
“Every morning I woke in dread, waiting for the day nurse to go on her rounds and announce from the list of names in her hand whether or not I was for shock treatment, the new and fashionable means of quieting people and of making them realize that orders are to be obeyed and floors are to be polished without anyone protesting and faces are to be made to be fixed into smiles and weeping is a crime.”
—Janet Frame (b. 1924)
“We have seen over and over that white male historians in general have tended to dismiss any history they didn’t themselves write, on the grounds that it is unserious, unscholarly, a fad, too “political,” “merely” oral and thus unreliable.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“Consensus is usually made possible by vague language and shallow commitments.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“In literature as in ethics, there is danger, as well as glory, in being subtle. Aristocracy isolates us.”
—Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867)
“Purity of race does not exist. Europe is a continent of energetic mongrels.”
—H.A.L. (Herbert Albert Laurens)