What Is a Language Isolate? Explore 7 Examples

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Most modern languages are members of a rich language family tree with branches reaching from one end of a continent to the other—or even halfway around the world! Languages that don’t have family members are called language isolates. That being said, even a family made of one member is still a family! Find out what it means to be a language isolate, how many there are, and dive deep into unique examples from around the world.

What is a language isolate?

A language isolate is a single language that exists on its own rather than being a part of a larger language family. This can mean that a language is thought to have developed independently of other languages, or a language isolate could be the last surviving language of an unidentified language family. 

For example, the Romance language family shares Latin as a common ancestor. Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian, and Romanian are all prominent examples of Romance languages. This is why someone who speaks Spanish will find similar vocabulary and grammar in Portuguese. Language isolates do not have any such relatives and are, in effect, a language family unto themselves.

To determine whether a language qualifies as an isolate, linguists compare it to other (usually geographically close) languages for anything that could trace it to an existing or extinct ancestral language. This can include grammar structure, phonology, shared history, and more. However, it’s important to note that shared words don’t equate to a shared language family. Loanwords and other borrowed influences over time don’t change the fact that a language isolate developed separately.

Language isolate classification

Classifying a language as an isolate can be difficult because languages constantly change and evolve, and ongoing research reveals previously undiscovered connections. Linguistic scholars sometimes disagree on whether any single language is truly an isolate, and languages may become recognized as being part of a larger family instead of an isolate when new data is available. 

The Japanese language is one such example. Historically, Japanese has been considered a language isolate. In recent years, this has become debatable because of connections to the Ryukyuan languages in the southern islands of the Japanese archipelago. 

Languages that can’t be proven as isolates are labeled as “unclassified languages.” Simply put, these are languages—oftentimes extinct—that we have too little information on to determine whether they’re related to another language or not. 

How many language isolates are there?

According to the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa, there are roughly 130 language isolates in the world, which are included as their own language families in an approximate total of the 400 language families worldwide. South America has the most with over 50 language isolates. This table lists several of the undisputed or widely accepted language isolates in different regions of the world.

While the reasons and implications are debated, geography is one factor that linguists have noticed impacts language development, as evidenced by where language isolates are found. The West Coast of the United States, the rainforests of South America, and the southern edge of the Sahara in Africa have particularly high concentrations of language isolates. Surpassing them all is Papua New Guinea with 839 languages and nine different language isolates alone!

How are language isolates written?

Some language isolates do not have their own written language, so linguists rely on existing writing systems to convey the spoken language as faithfully as possible. This may include the use of writing systems from the surrounding region where the language isolate is spoken or use of the language of those writing about the isolate.

Alternatively, languages written with one type of script can be rewritten in another script. This is called “transliteration.” Even languages that largely use the same writing system as English can have transliterations like the Eszett (ẞ) in the German alphabet being transliterated as “ss.” 

Languages like English use the Latin (or Roman) alphabet. When this alphabet is used to write out languages that don’t normally use it, this is called “romanization.” Out of the languages covered by Rosetta Stone, you can see romanization in action when you learn Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Hindi, and others.

What is the most spoken language isolate?

Korean is the most spoken language isolate by a wide margin with more than 75 million speakers worldwide. It’s the official language of both North Korea and South Korea, although there are some linguistic divergences, resulting in two major dialects. The South Korean adoption of foreign loanwords is particularly noticeable compared to the North Korean adherence to more traditional words.

Korean is special in that it’s both a widely spoken language and a language isolate. There are some experts who debate that Korean is a part of the Altaic family, which includes major languages like Mongolian and Turkish. However, because this cannot yet be conclusively proven, Korean is still treated as a language isolate. If you want to speak a language isolate yourself, learning Korean is one of the most accessible ways to do so!

More examples of language isolates

Due to many language isolates lacking a written language, romanization is used to discuss them in writing in other languages like English, so spellings may differ across research materials. Some languages even go by multiple names depending on who named them! For the purpose of this introduction to language isolates, we’ll cover six languages with the assumption that their current classification as isolates is correct. 

Basque

Coming in second place for the most spoken language isolate, just under a million people speak the Basque language. The name of the Basque language is actually Euskara, but it’s often referred to as Basque. It’s the official regional language of Basque Country in northwestern Spain and the Pyrénées-Atlantiques region in southwestern France. At present, the Basque language is considered to be the last surviving language isolate in Europe. 

Even so, the modern Basque language is diverse and has multiple dialects. There may be between five and eight, depending on whether overlaps between dialects are considered separate or not. These are five Basque dialects that are generally agreed upon:

• Western (Biscayan)
• Central (Gipuzkoan)
• Navarrese
• Navarrese-Lapurdian
• Zuberoan (Souletin)

Variations in vocabulary and phonology—how a language sounds and conveys meaning—point to the external influence of other languages on the Basque language. Rather than hindering the language’s uniqueness, this adaptability could be one reason the Basque language has survived as a language isolate. 

Though surrounded linguistically by French and Spanish, you can see in this table how much Basque differs in its greetings:

Bangi me

In a handful of Mali villages in West Africa, approximately 3,000-4,000 Bangande speak Bangi me. It was only introduced as a possible language isolate in 2007 but has since been agreed upon as undisputed.

While the speakers themselves consider their language to be a Dogon language, linguists have found that Bangi me is too different in its morphology—the structure of words—to be a part of the same language family. Unlike Dogon languages, which are agglutinative languages, Bangi me tenses, aspects, and mood markers are all unbound morphemes. In particular, Dogon languages have several suffixes on verbs, while Bangi me does not.

Bangi me is a tonal language with a high and a low tone. Each mora—a syllable or letter(s)—carries a tone. As Bangi me lacks a writing system of its own, this table illustrates the difference in tones using accent markings where a downward mark (grave accent) is a low tone and an upward mark (acute accent) is a high tone.

Ainu

On the large northern island of Hokkaido in the Japanese archipelago, Ainu (or Ainu Itak) is the native language of the Indigenous Ainu people. There are approximately 300 people who speak the Ainu language today.

Since the 14th century, the use of the language gradually began to fall out of use in favor of Japanese, but it wasn’t until the Japanese government annexed Hokkaido in 1869 that the Ainu language truly began to disappear. Despite the odds, the Ainu community is making efforts to keep it alive through Ainu dictionaries and textbooks, language courses, and the promotion of Ainu culture.

In the past, there were multiple Ainu dialects. The one that remains today is from Hokkaido, but other dialects were used in Sakhalin (a large Russian island just north of Hokkaido) and the Kuril Islands (a disputed territory east of Sakhalin). Ainu was originally a verbal language, but the Latin alphabet and the Japanese katakana alphabet are used today. Some words, such as those of plants found on the Japanese archipelago, sound similar to Japanese, but the languages are otherwise isolated.

Tiwi

On the Bathurst and Melville Islands north of Australia, the Tiwi language is spoken by approximately 2,500 people. Modern Tiwi has taken on many English loanwords, but the traditional Tiwi language is generally spoken by the oldest members of the community. 

Tiwi is a gendered language where everything is masculine or feminine, including adjectives and nouns. Similar to how some feminine words in Spanish ending in “-a” and masculine words in “-o,” endings of Tiwi words generally indicate gender.

• “-ni” and “-ti” are masculine
• “-nga” and “-ka” are feminine
• “-wi” and “-pi” are plural 

Verbs, in particular, are long and complex. Prefixes and suffixes surrounding the stem of the verb can indicate the subject, tense, aspect, time, and more!

Cofán

Located in the Amazon Rainforest of Ecuador and Colombia, Cofán is spoken by approximately 1,500 people. It’s also known as A’ingae by the people who speak it. They were relatively isolated until the 1950s, and there are no known dialects.

One aspect of the Cofán language that has garnered attention from linguists is its high amount of clitics, which are unstressed morphemes that must be attached to another word to maintain its meaning. In English, this is like the apostrophe “s” in “it’s.” Examples of clitics in the Cofán language include:

• “-in”: simultaneous actions
• “-ndekhû”: human plural
• “-a”: attributive

Zuni

Roughly 10,000 people speak the Zuni language in New Mexico, and it’s called Shiwi’ma by those who live in Zuni Pueblo. The Indigenous people, also known by their native name of A:shiwi, have lived in the region along the Zuni River since at least the 14th century.

Languages from several other small language families exist in the area where the Indigenous Pueblo people live, in what is now New Mexico. Sometimes debated as another language isolate, the Keres language family is also part of the Pueblo languages. Despite being in such close proximity in terms of location and culture, the vocabulary of the Zuni and Keres languages are distinct from one another and those around them:

While still small compared to other languages, the Zuni language is encouraged in a thriving community. The schools in Zuni teach the language and A:shiwi culture alongside conventional subjects, people speak it at home and in public, and modern methods like the internet are used to keep record of their unique language. By keeping new generations immersed in their language, the A:shiwi people keep the language alive.

Key takeaways about language isolates

By definition, every language isolate is unique. To know one is not to know them all. That being said, each one is a new experience! To ensure the survival of language isolates, it’s important to talk about them and learn more about them before they’re forgotten.

• A language isolate is a language that does not share ancestry with any other language.
• There are approximately 130 language isolates, making up almost a third of all language families.
• Korean, Basque, Bangi me, Ainu, Tiwi, Zuni, and Cofán are examples of language isolates
• Some language isolates are disputed and reclassified when new research is done.
• Language isolates are found in all corners of the world except for Antarctica.