Languages without relatives
Language isolates
Most languages have hundreds of relatives. A few have none anywhere in the world.
Chapter 1
The orphan of the Pyrenees
Basque is ringed by Indo-European — Spanish, French, Gascon — and related to none of them. It is very likely the last survivor of the languages of western Europe before Indo-European arrived. Its numbers show how much it stands apart.
| Basque | Spanish | French | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | bat | uno | un |
| 2 | bi | dos | deux |
| 3 | hiru | tres | trois |
| 4 | lau | cuatro | quatre |
| 5 | bost | cinco | cinq |
Chapter 2
Among the mountains
In the Karakoram valleys of northern Pakistan, Burushaski is surrounded by Indo-European, Sino-Tibetan and Turkic — and kin to none of them. Mountains and valleys are often refuges for old languages.
Chapter 3
Alone on clay
Sumerian, one of humanity’s first written languages, is also an isolate. We know it only because Mesopotamians pressed it into clay five thousand years ago; countless other isolates vanished without a trace.
Chapter 4
Scattered across the world
Glottolog lists 183 isolates, on almost every continent and especially in the Americas and New Guinea. Each counts as a family of one — in the forest of languages, a lone tree.