Everywhere’s Been Visited
To those adventurous who say they are not sure where to go next because they have been everywhere and done everything comes, from National Geographic, a salutary reminder that this world of ours is bigger than we thought. Given how many humans there are in the world and the level of exploration there has been you would have thought what else was left to find.
Yes they are still finding new species in the great depths of the ocean and in the thickest forests but people?
Maybe I exaggerate slightly but a team from National Geographic has discovered a new language in Arunachal Pradesh in India. Reported by USA Today and called Koro, it is estimated that it is spoken by between 800 and 1,200 people. The researchers say that it is so very different from languages and dialects spoken nearby that they are wondering how it originated. One thought is that people were enslaved and brought here. But for that to be the case, you probably need to find its existence elsewhere. And there’s the rub. The language isn’t written, just spoken so it could have died out elsewhere. And if it’s unwritten how can you spell it? With a westerners interpretation of spelling? With the nearest written language’s interpretation? Who knows other than that we now have another language making 6,909.
But for Koro, unless the storytelling reveals its origins, we may be just reduced to language students who study words and try to find links to other tongues.
But for the jaded tourist it shows that there is more to see, more to find, more to explore and the world isn’t as small as we thought.
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