Explaining the different kinds of language isolates isolates
Depending on whom you ask, there are between
86 and
129 known language isolates in the world right now. If we characterise each language isolate as their own family, it turns out that type of families will make up around one third of all the world’s language families. But, as is the case with many terms in linguistics, no one seems to be able to agree on what exactly constitutes a
language isolate.
In the strictest sense, one should only refer to language isolates in the case where a living, natural language has no known relatives or parent-languages. They’re not known to share a common ancestor with any other known language and, essentially, form a separate language family all on their own. This is the category that holds
Basque and
Korean, for example.
If you’re taking the more liberal approach, however, the concept expands to include languages whose ancestry is known and who previously had known relatives but whose sister-languages have since died out. Essentially, these languages are a part of a bigger family tree but remain the only living leaf on their branch. Examples for this category include
Albanian and
Greek.
Of course, there are those who disagree with even this categorisation. Some claim to have
discovered the Basque ancestor who’s been missing for centuries and others do the same for the other isolates. None of these theories are widely accepted, however. But the trouble of classification doesn’t even stop there.
Japanese – once an isolate, now a family
Trying to draw distinct borders between modern languages is often a complicated and thankless task. What is one day considered a mere
dialect can the next be elevated to the status of a fully fledged language and find their newfound rights stripped away the next. This feature also impacts the general understanding of isolates.
For example, up until recently, Japanese was considered a very exemplary form of a language isolate. Today, however, it’s included in the
Japonic language family with the smaller Ryukyuan languages. Funnily enough, these small languages that are spoken on the nearby Ryukyu islands, are actually considered dialects by many on mainland Japan, despite their very limited intelligibility.
But, by working on the similarities between Japanese and Ryukyuan languages, linguists were able to construct the now-extinct Proto-Japanese that must’ve been their mutual ancestor, and so, Japanese is no longer considered isolated. Although, since most of the Ryukyuan languages are in danger of dying out, Japanese might soon join the more liberal class of language isolates.
Will we ever figure out where Basque or Korean came from?
So, if Japanese finally found its family, is there a hope that the same might happen for Basque and Korean as well?
In the case of Korean, for example, plenty of hypotheses have been put forward.
Some link Korean and Jeju, spoken on Korea’s biggest island of the same name, together to form a small Koreanic language family, while others consider Jeju a dialect of Korean. There is also a group of linguists who add Korean to the Altaic language family, although it’s
not even entirely certain that language family exists and, many claim that even if it does, Korean definitely doesn’t belong in it. A further theory includes Korean in the
Paleosiberian family, although that group is not so much a family, as it is a bunch of straggling languages collected together under one umbrella term.
In any case, a convincing Proto-Korean language has yet to be produced, although it could very well be that in the coming years, one of the presented theories will be proven to be true or that a completely new classification of Korean will emerge.
The case is not any different with the origin of Basque, either.
Plenty of theories on the ancestry of Basque exist but all of them remain controversial and none is widely accepted.
So, as you can see, there is ongoing work in the field but, as we mentioned, trying to classify languages is often a complicated task. It’s not certain there will ever be concrete answers but as soon as a groundbreaking discovery takes place, we’ll be sure to let you know!
What is an unclassified language?
An unclassified language is any language for which not enough information exists to determine which family it belongs in. In some cases, this might be because the only data that exists are a few words, names or short phrases. Other times, there might be more substantial documentation available but it’s still not enough to make a definite decision.