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The language spoken by only eight people in the world

2022-04-28 19:58:52Lifestyle SHKRUAR NGA REDAKSIA VOX
The language spoken by only eight people in the world
Kawesqar

Did you know that there is a language spoken by only eight people worldwide?

This is Kawesqar, an isolated language of an indigenous people from southern Chile and Argentina. The nomadic group lives between Penas Bay and the Magellan Strait.

Although the Kawésqars are believed to have lived in western Patagonia about 10,000 years ago, the first known evidence of their language appeared between 1688 and 1689 by the French explorer Jean de la Gilbardi. But with the passage of time and the arrival of settlers in this southern part of Chile, the ethnic group underwent a brutal transformation: they not only abandoned their nomadic life but also pushed their language into the background.

Learning Spanish became a necessity for them, and today, only eight people speak their original language. Four of them are elderly. Three were born in the 1960s - the last generation to learn the language since childhood and only one, who is not a member of the ethnic group.

The language spoken by only eight people in the world

Where does it come from?

In the case of Kawésqar, as well as many other indigenous languages, the answer is not yet clear. This is partly because it is considered an "isolated" or "unclassified" language. So it is not part of a language family.

It also has no relation to any other language (as there is, for example, Spanish, which comes from Latin and is part of Romance languages). Being "isolated" is more difficult to discover where its words, structure or grammar come from.

What features does it have?

Due to its morphological characteristics, Kawésqar is an agglutinative language (like Turkish and others) and polysynthetic; that is, there are "words, sentences or phrases" that cannot be translated into Spanish with a single word.

"There is no one-to-one equivalence, such as the English table and the Spanish 'table'," Oscar Aguilera told the BBC. Despite the Kawésqars' extensive contacts with the settlers, they are reluctant to accept words of borrowing from the Spaniards.

Thus, they have created their own words. The few words that have been adopted from Spanish have undergone phonetic transformations. For example "ship", it is said jemmáse but also wárko. "B" in Spanish is replaced by "w", as the sound "b" does not exist in Kawésqar.

The language spoken by only eight people in the world

Why is it in danger of extinction?

Being spoken by only eight people, it is one of the languages ​​that UNESCO considers endangered. "The problem is that, in general terms, it is not a practical language. "It's better to learn Spanish or study English," says Oscar Aguilera.

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