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Language Birth—Asterisk

asteriskmag.com · 4,436 words · saved by 3 readers

Since 1960, the world has lost hundreds of languages — and gained thousands.

Language Birth—Asterisk Since 1960, the world has lost hundreds of languages — and gained thousands. In October 1992, a Circassian man by the name of Tevfik Esenç passed away at the age of 88. Esenç had been, as his gravestone attested, “the last person able to speak the language they called Ubykh.” An extreme example of the remarkable languages of the Caucasus mountains, Ubykh was articulated with all of 80 different consonants, compared to English’s 24. Regarding Ubykh, linguist John Colarusso noted that “any rigorous account of human phonetic perceptual capacity will have to take into accou

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