Have you ever dreamed of learning a language that only you can understand, but is still understood by a few other people? Language isolates are the best languages for you to learn!
There is much speculation, theorising and conspiracies about the origin of language isolates, so what are they? And what even are language isolates?
What are language isolates?
Language isolates are (real) languages that have no linguistic similarities to any other language, both geographically and etymologically. These languages are also languages that have not descended from a language that is an ancestor of another language!
In an overly-simplified way, a language isolate is a language that is a language family all on its own!
It must be stated however, that many linguists argue over the correct definition of ‘language isolate’
A minority of linguists also use the term ‘language isolate’ to describe certain languages in other language families, to describe how they have developed to have similar, but also drastically different, language features and structures.
A few examples of language isolates are: Sumerian, Basque, Korean, Vedda, Elamite and Ainu. Many expert linguist have claimed that language isolates are some of the most difficult languages to learn, due to their relative isolation from other languages.
Due to the fact that many isolates are difficult to learn, many are going extinct, or are on the verge of extinction- the main exception to this rule being Korean, which is flourishing.
Where do linguists believe language isolates came from?
There are many theories that ‘explain’ where language isolates come from!
They aren’t really isolates, some language ‘experts’ have taken the definition of a language isolate, and have taken it, as many would say, a little too far. These linguists claim, that as we are classifying them based on known languages, we are missing languages we don’t know about.
These linguists claim that there could’ve been oral languages (languages that weren’t written down) that could’ve been related to a particular language isolate. They claim that those people could’ve died out, before modern record keeping, which would’ve meant their language is lost to history.
These linguists also claim that there is a possibility that some languages that are similar to a given isolate, were indeed written down, they have just not been found yet, in order to back this theory up.
There are also a small portion of those said linguists, who believe that these languages are so mutually-intelligible, that we have mistaken them for written samples of the isolate.
War, I believe it was Trotsky who said “War is the locomotion of history!” War has been with humans as a civilisation, since the beginning. Some linguists have claimed that war is the reason why we class some languages as isolates.
They claim that war in the earliest parts of human history wiped out the other languages in their language family, and due to the fact that writing was not yet a concept, those related-languages would’ve been lost to history.
Obviously, this theory overlaps slightly with the theory that states there is no such thing as an isolate, and is often used by those linguists who support that theory as almost a backing-up their theory.
It should be stated, however, the linguists who claimed that war is the reasons for certain languages being isolates, have said that their theory is not to be used to back up that theory.
Language-merging, a few number of linguists suggest that, potentially due to war, migration or something else, two related languages merged together. They claim that this new hybrid language is the only language of its family to survive throughout the centuries.
They claim that due to this, we can see slight etymological roots in isolates from when those two languages merged together. We asked one of the authors of that study to give us a simplified quote to use:
“Think of it like this, English has a lot of French and German words in it. Let’s say that we removed all of the non-Franco-Germanic words (words that are either from French or German) from the English language.
“We then (somehow) got a time machine, and traveled to the future. We’d see that the language would’ve evolved beyond the Anglo-Franco-Germanic language we’d started off with originally. Now just imagine that with Korean, or Basque, or Ainu, or any other isolate for that matter!”
We already have their relatives, we just don’t know it. This is quoted by many linguists, or people who wish to seem as they know everything about languages (not to say that this theory is wrong).
It does seem the most plausible after all. Languages evolve just as animals do.
Some linguists claim that a language that we claim is an isolate, is just a language that has merely evolved very quickly. They claim that these languages are normally from places that are either extremely remote, or are repeatedly conquered throughout history.
Due to this, when these languages have evolved (if they have evolved in the case of remote languages) they have evolved with the new (or extremely old) vocabulary. This has caused the language to be so far apart from the languages it was once repeated to, that it has become an isolate.
Aliens, at Raptor Translations Magazine, we don’t tend to believe in conspiracy theories, unless they end up becoming true of course.
Some theorists (note that these people are not linguists), claim that the speakers of language isolates are either: descended from aliens, or are aliens themselves.
The people behind the theory claim that due to the fact that we can’t isolate where the language originates from, they must be from outer space.
They claim that aliens have visited Earth several times throughout our history, influencing global events, dropping off ‘colonists’ and building great monuments (really?!!)
The descendants of whom are the speakers of language isolates. Their main piece of ‘evidence’ is the fact that the DNA of these people are slightly different from the other groups around them. They cite this as proof that these people are part alien, and part human (really?!!)
Some have speculated that this is what influenced Francisco Franco in his persecution of the Basque (and other minority languages, such as Leonese, Catalan and Aragonese).
Please note that the people who normally subscribe to this train of thought, also believe that the pyramids (and other structures) were built by aliens.
Which theory is correct?
Without a time machine, enough evidence to bury the conspiracy theorists and good writing talent, we will never know the origins of language isolates.
Obviously, some of the theories are more realistic than others, with some being wild!
At the end of the day, they are all merely theories, which have evidence to back them up, and evidence that refutes the theory. You can believe in whichever theory you want to, because after all, there is no way of truly, 100% knowing where they came from.
So for all we know, they could be the languages spoken by the aliens who built the Pyramids (however unlikely that may be). They could be the result of war or language merging, or a million and one other theories we neglected to mention.
I cannot stress this enough, we will never know the full truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth (so help me god!)
Where do believe language isolates came from? Tell me in the comments!