# The Least-Spoken Language. **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [March 19, 2014, 11:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-least-spoken-language/684076 "2014-03-19T11:42:37Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2014, 10:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-least-spoken-language/684076/21 "2014-03-20T10:47:57Z")
If you want to know about where a language is spoken (or what it’s related to or how many people speak it or the answer to many other questions about the language), go to Ethnologue: > **[the world](https://www.ethnologue.com/)** > > Find, read about, and research all 7,168 living languages. Ethnologue is the ultimate source of information on the world's languages. You’ll find there the webpage for the Aramaic group of languages: [https://www.ethnologue.com/subgroups/aramaic](https://www.ethnologue.com/subgroups/aramaic) Ethnologue is your quick reference for any of the world’s languages. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2014, 11:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-least-spoken-language/684076/22 "2014-03-20T11:36:30Z")
Chihuahua writes: \> Those who spoke the language usually only counted up to ten, using their fingers. Having very few numbers in a language is not extremely rare. I can’t find a list of such languages, but there are several of them. A much publicized case recently is Pirahã, which doesn’t have any numbers. It’s possible to say “a little of” or “a lot of,” but there are no exact numbers at all: > **[Pirahã language](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirah%C3%A3_language)** > > Pirahã (also spelled Pirahá, Pirahán), or Múra-Pirahã, is the indigenous language of the isolated Pirahã people of Amazonas, Brazil. The Pirahã live along the Maici River, a tributary of the Amazon River. > Pirahã is the only surviving dialect of the Mura language; all others having died out in the last few centuries as most groups of the Mura people have shifted to Portuguese. Suspected relatives, such as Matanawi, are also extinct. Pirahã is estimated to have between 250 and 380 speakers. It is ... ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2014, 2:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-least-spoken-language/684076/23 "2014-03-20T14:08:03Z")
Pirahã is really a special case, though, because they’re missing almost everything that a language or cultural group “ought” to have. Last I heard, the working hypothesis was that at some point in the relatively recent past, some sort of cataclysm killed off all of the adults of the tribe, leaving only the uneducated children to re-populate. ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2014, 3:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-least-spoken-language/684076/24 "2014-03-20T15:41:38Z")
Also, all our information about the Piraha culture comes from one guy, who is apparently the only non-Piraha person in the world who speaks Piraha. So it’s entirely possible all the stuff he says about what the Piraha supposedly believe and features of their language and way of life is completely bogus. ---
**Author:** ![Procrustus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/procrustus/32/2994_2.png) [@Procrustus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Procrustus)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2014, 3:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-least-spoken-language/684076/25 "2014-03-20T15:51:24Z")
[Last native speaker of Klallam language dies in Washington state](http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/02/07/us-usa-klallam-death-idUSBREA1605W20140207) last month. Others have since learned it, but she was the last to learn it as a first langauge. ---
**Author:** ![Diceman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Diceman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diceman)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2014, 4:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-least-spoken-language/684076/26 "2014-03-20T16:26:12Z")
> [@tapu](#): > > Linguists have been scrambling for decades to record dying languages before they fade away. I’ve heard of various attmepts revive dead or moribund languages, usually with an immersion school set up somewhere. I’ve got to wonder, has any dead language ever been truely revived? By that, I mean that it has once again become the primary spoken language for a group of people. Languages that are learned in a classroom, but are rarely ever used outside that context, are specifically not what I’m talking about. That’s what I’d call “pseudo-revival,” or perhaps a “zombie language”: a situation where knowledge of the language is preserved, mainly due to ethnic pride or some similar reason, but the language is really little more than a novelty. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2014, 5:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-least-spoken-language/684076/27 "2014-03-20T17:06:59Z")
> [@Diceman](#): > > I’ve heard of various attmepts revive dead or moribund languages, usually with an immersion school set up somewhere. I’ve got to wonder, has any dead language ever been truely revived? By that, I mean that it has once again become the primary spoken language for a group of people. Languages that are learned in a classroom, but are rarely ever used outside that context, are specifically not what I’m talking about. That’s what I’d call “pseudo-revival,” or perhaps a “zombie language”: a situation where knowledge of the language is preserved, mainly due to ethnic pride or some similar reason, but the language is really little more than a novelty. Probably the best-known example of this is [modern Hebrew.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebrew_language) It died out as except as a liturgical language by about AD 200, but was revived starting in the late 1800s and is now one of the two official languages of Israel. ---
**Author:** ![Chefguy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chefguy/32/138_2.png) [@Chefguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chefguy)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2014, 5:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-least-spoken-language/684076/28 "2014-03-20T17:53:12Z")
The last known speaker of the Eyak language (Na-Dene) of Southeast Alaska, Marie Smith Jones, died in 2008. The language is now officially extinct. ---
**Author:** ![bordelond](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bordelond/32/150_2.png) [@bordelond](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bordelond)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2014, 6:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-least-spoken-language/684076/29 "2014-03-20T18:55:47Z")
A related question: What language has the fewest numbers of _monoglot_ speakers? ---
**Author:** ![cmkeller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cmkeller/32/118_2.png) [@cmkeller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cmkeller)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2014, 6:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-least-spoken-language/684076/30 "2014-03-20T18:57:24Z")
Senegoid: > [@](#): > > I’ve wondered why, in Biblical times, Hebrew died out in favor of Aramaic by the time of Jesus. They’re rather similar languages, it seems. Amongst religious Jews, Hebrew was the “holy” language and reserved for ritual use (and, of course, Torah study). Throughout the ages, there have been languages used by Jews for mundane conversation which are influenced by Hebrew, but clearly based on other languages as well - Yiddish is the most obvious example. It was not until the Zionist movement that Hebrew ever became a language used in mundane conversation. ---
**Author:** ![Diceman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Diceman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diceman)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2014, 7:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-least-spoken-language/684076/31 "2014-03-20T19:38:29Z")
> [@Colibri](#): > > Probably the best-known example of this is [modern Hebrew.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebrew_language) It died out as except as a liturgical language by about AD 200, but was revived starting in the late 1800s and is now one of the two official languages of Israel. I remembered that after I posted. That’s got to be far & away the most successful revived language. After a bit of searching, it seems that Cornish has been revived, and has about 500-600 people who claim it as their primary language. I’ve got to wonder how that’s going to hold up in the next generation. I suspect that most of the kids will only use it as a second language, preferring English because it won’t restrict them the way Cornish will. I kinda think that most revived languages will begin dying again within a generation, for the same reason the language died the first time. ---
**Author:** ![EdwardLost](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/bbe5ce/32.png) [@EdwardLost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EdwardLost)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2014, 11:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-least-spoken-language/684076/32 "2014-03-20T23:54:11Z")
> [@Diceman](#): > > I’ve heard of various attmepts revive dead or moribund languages, usually with an immersion school set up somewhere. I’ve got to wonder, has any dead language ever been truely revived? By that, I mean that it has once again become the primary spoken language for a group of people. Languages that are learned in a classroom, but are rarely ever used outside that context, are specifically not what I’m talking about. That’s what I’d call “pseudo-revival,” or perhaps a “zombie language”: a situation where knowledge of the language is preserved, mainly due to ethnic pride or some similar reason, but the language is really little more than a novelty. Extinct languages can only be revived to the extent that they were recorded. Even if there are numerous texts available, chances are they will still encompass just a sliver of the language as it existed when it was spoken among a large population. There were doubtless many, many phrases, words, shades of meaning, usages, etc. that would not have been written down and thus would be lost forever. Also, no one person contains in his head an entire, living language. My teenage daughter uses words, slang, and turns of phrase I don’t know. Each of us hundreds of millions of English speakers use only a subset of what is “English”. When a language population declines the language itself erodes. When you get down to that last one native speak of X, that person is not really speaking X - not X as it was when there were thousands of native speakers. Most of X will already have been lost. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2014, 2:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-least-spoken-language/684076/33 "2014-03-21T02:24:47Z")
I would not say that a case where a single classics professor taught his child to speak Latin from birth means that Latin has become a living language. This is going to sound like throwing in extra requirements whenever necessary, but it seems to me that a living language would have to be the native language of children in a community. It’s possible that someone has been able to have their child grow up speaking Klingon or Elvish, but unless they have done it in a community where the children grow up speaking those languages to each other, it’s not like how other languages are learned. Ordinary languages evolve because children speak to each other and gradually change the language over generations. ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2014, 3:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-least-spoken-language/684076/34 "2014-03-21T03:23:31Z")
> [@Mr.Kobayashi](#): > > Ayapaneco - there are only two fluent speakers left, [but they refuse to speak to each other.](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/apr/13/mexico-language-ayapaneco-dying-out) She may be dead now and I don’t even remember the name of the language, but I distinctly recall years ago reading about an old woman who was the last speaker in the world of her language. She had no one to speak it with! ---
**Author:** ![tapu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/49beb7/32.png) [@tapu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tapu)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2014, 11:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-least-spoken-language/684076/35 "2014-03-21T11:31:43Z")
> [@bordelond](#): > > A related question: > > What language has the fewest numbers of _monoglot_ speakers? That’s an interesting question. I’m going to guess Basque, for a number of reasons, but I’ll go research it. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2014, 1:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-least-spoken-language/684076/36 "2014-03-21T13:19:50Z")
> [@tapu](#): > > That’s an interesting question. I’m going to guess Basque, for a number of reasons, but I’ll go research it. Yeah, finding any Basque who is monoglot is highly unlikely and if you count the dialects as separate entities, even lower; same for Catalan: in Andorra it’s the official language but Andorranos consider that less than four languages at native level makes someone a functional mute. Note that both have quite a few speakers, just very few if any who don’t speak anything else; there are some for whom “the other local language” is clearly a second one, but they still speak it better than your usual second-language-speaker. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2014, 3:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-least-spoken-language/684076/37 "2014-03-21T15:34:32Z")
> [@tapu](#): > > That’s an interesting question. I’m going to guess Basque, for a number of reasons, but I’ll go research it. Basque may be one of the larger ones, but there are going to be hundreds if not thousands of languages with only a small number of speakers, all of whom also speak more widespread languages. ---
**Author:** ![robert\_columbia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e79b87/32.png) [@robert\_columbia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robert_columbia)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2014, 5:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-least-spoken-language/684076/38 "2014-03-21T17:57:29Z")
> [@bordelond](#): > > A related question: > > What language has the fewest numbers of _monoglot_ speakers? > [@tapu](#): > > That’s an interesting question. I’m going to guess Basque, for a number of reasons, but I’ll go research it. Scottish Gaelic might also be a contender. Nearly all speakers live in the UK or Canada and speak English fluently. ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_Angel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/d26b3c/32.png) [@Johnny\_Angel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_Angel)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2014, 3:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-least-spoken-language/684076/39 "2014-03-25T15:37:37Z")
> [@Donnerwetter](#): > > I wonder if maybe there are indeed some native Latin speakers, maybe children of classics professors who were raised bilingual? By comparison, there are, according to Wikipedia, about 1000 individuals who speak Esperanto natively. One has to assume that their parents were very much into Esperanto and decided to teach their offspring from early childhood. There are those who were raised speaking Latin just as with any bilingual upbringing. Despite the brain’s capacity for multiple languages, children at the height of their language learning years tend to instinctively reject extra languages if they detect that these are less important or stigmatized in some way in their environment. The minority language is always in danger. From the cases I know of personally, the acceptance rate for Latin as a second mother tongue is about 50%, which is pretty good given that there’s not much community support. But even kids who do not speak the language will often be passively bilingual – that is, they understand it but tend not to speak it. > [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > I would not say that a case where a single classics professor taught his child to speak Latin from birth means that Latin has become a living language. This is going to sound like throwing in extra requirements whenever necessary, but it seems to me that a living language would have to be the native language of children in a community. It’s possible that someone has been able to have their child grow up speaking Klingon or Elvish, but unless they have done it in a community where the children grow up speaking those languages to each other, it’s not like how other languages are learned. Ordinary languages evolve because children speak to each other and gradually change the language over generations. Yes, clearly you’re moving the goal posts from the generally accepted criterion that no one is passing it onto their children. Surely, you say, it is a dead language if children aren’t speaking it to each other. Except if it turns out that children are in fact speaking it to each other, but those are siblings, you’ll want to move the goal posts even further and say the community has to involve multiple family units. But because speakers of Latin do gather from around the world and some bring their kids, you’ll want to start making qualifications about proximity of community and frequency and length of discourse, etc. But I think we should recognize that whatever exactly counts as a living language, Latin is a special case despite standing as the classic (as it were) case of a dead tongue. It has persisted for millenia with fairly few grammatical shifts, but since the time that it first came into its own as a distinct language there has never been a time in two thousand years that people haven’t been trying to find ways of talking about new things in it. New vocabulary has been added and old vocabulary has shifted in meaning in ways sometimes dramatic. _Massa_, which once meant a shapeless wad of stuff, often in reference to bread dough, became the term for a quantifiable accumulation of matter that exerted a _nūmen_ (formerly, divine will) attracting other masses to itself. This is exactly the kind of thing you don’t expect from a dead language. And on the other hand, Latin is largely picked up as a second language through study. Not how we think of living languages either. Latin, due to historical circumstances, developed a status that defies a simple living/dead categorization. ---
**Author:** ![robert\_columbia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e79b87/32.png) [@robert\_columbia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robert_columbia)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2014, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-least-spoken-language/684076/40 "2014-03-25T16:08:34Z")
> [@Johnny\_Angel](#): > > … > > But I think we should recognize that whatever exactly counts as a living language, Latin is a special case despite standing as the classic (as it were) case of a dead tongue…This is exactly the kind of thing you don’t expect from a dead language. And on the other hand, Latin is largely picked up as a second language through study. Not how we think of living languages either. > > Latin, due to historical circumstances, developed a status that defies a simple living/dead categorization. Also, classical Latin as it is understood today is actually a formal dialect of a language continuum stretching across millennia and thousands of miles. When, exactly, did people in Spain stop speaking Latin and start speaking Spanish? When the Western Roman Empire fell? When the Moors invaded Spain? When Ferdinand and Isabella re-united the country? When your great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandma burned some pancakes and came up with a new swearword that people in Italy didn’t want to adopt? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-least-spoken-language/684076.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-least-spoken-language/684076.md?page=3)