Little Orphan Languages

SITE IS UNDER CONSTRUCTION

THERE WILL BE MORE CONTENT ADDED ON A SEMI-REGULAR BASIS...

Like this super-cool graphic...

There are about six thousand languages in the world, but let’s face it—some of them get a lot more attention than others. We all know who they are—they’re your Spanish, your French, your German and Italian. They’re like the popular kids in school. Do a quick Google search and you’ll find eleventy-million websites where you can suck down vocab and conjugate verbs to your heart’s content.

But what about all those other languages? Why don’t they get the love?

There are multiple reasons, of course. A distressingly high number of languages on Earth are on the verge of disappearing because no one speaks them anymore—or, more accurately, children don’t learn them anymore. You’ll have maybe a half-dozen or fewer people who still speak the language, but nobody is actively learning it for everyday use. These languages might not be salvageable as active languages, but we as language enthusiasts can help gather resources and knowledge about them, if nothing else. Some examples are languages spoken by aboriginal peoples on every continent, from Native American languages to languages spoken only in small pockets in Southeast Asian or island nations, to aboriginal Australian languages, to the gajillion languages spoken only in the small square footage of Papua New Guinea, to languages found in the deeps of Siberia (which, interestingly enough, find their closest relatives in the Native American languages). The loss of these languages represents the loss of rich cultural traditions, as they’re crowded out by speakers of more “popular” languages or pushed aside by governments forcing assimilation in the native populations. I think we can all agree that this sucks.

Then there are the languages that are actually spoken very actively, in everyday life, by a large number of people, but which aren’t considered “useful.” Hindi is a very widely spoken language, as are Farsi and Urdu, but you don’t see them popping up on Duolingo or Rosetta Stone. Or how about Swahili, one of the most common tongues in large portions of Africa? Why don’t these languages get more attention? Even Arabic, arguably one of the most important languages politically in our world today, has fewer readily available learning resources than most European languages.

Much of the European/Western slant on language learning is, of course, political. Swahili and Farsi aren’t necessarily considered gateways to World Domination the way English or Chinese are. Learning Arabic can actually get you tossed off a plane in the US, and how silly is that when communication between English- and Arabic-speaking peoples is so vital if we’re going to come to any kind of understanding on this planet?

Anyway, political nonsense aside, I think it’s important to be aware of the vast numbers of languages in the world that are either set aside as “secondary” or that are just plain dying. Which leads to the purpose of this website.

With Little Orphan Languages, I intend to compile resources about languages that aren’t as easy to find for learning purposes. Some of these languages are neither Little nor Orphans, but they’re a bit scarce on the ground when compared to others. Some are even experiencing revivals among their native speakers—or those who would have been native speakers under slightly different circumstances.

I hope you’ll find something of interest here. Maybe you’ll be sparked to learn the basics of a language just because it’s cool, rather than because it’s useful in the marketplace. Maybe you’ll decide to compile some information of your own about a language your ancestors spoke, but which is falling out of use. However you find a new bond with a language you might carry in your DNA or that you may never have heard of before, I hope this site will be of some help.