Top 10 Extinct Languages in India and Asia

Not all of the languages spoken in the world survived up to today, in order learn about them, we bring you the list of top 10 extinct languages in India and Asia.

Aside from current modern languages, there were thousands of additional ones. At times they were spoken by a very small number of people, one tribe or a smaller community. This is one of the main contributors to why today they don’t have any living speakers. However, since language is considered to be the one of the greatest treasures that we have and  an important part of our identity, we tend to preserve even the memory of those extinct languages. We try and learn more about them and people who spoke them. So, even though the languages on this list are not among those in usage today, they played an important role in the history of various nations, and taking that into consideration, it is important to know at least their names.

Some of the Top 10 Extinct Languages in India and Asia disappeared due to the specific circumstances, in which some communities needed to assimilate with their surroundings. These communities accepted different cultures and often completely switch to that new cultures’ language. On the other side, there were also cases that some nations were always bilingual and eventually gave the preference to the second language, not teaching their children to preserve the both.

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Similarly to the top 15 Critically Endangered Languages in India, which you should definitely check out if you are interested in languages, we used UNESCO’s list of the languages in danger to form this list. We identified all of the languages from Asia that are marked as extinct, or not spoken anymore. However, in order to provide a broader picture of Asia, we managed to include the languages that were spoken in various parts throughout the whole continent, including India as well. The final classification of the languages was made according to the period in which they became extinct, so the list is organized from the languages that disappeared a long time ago, to those which became such quite recently.

The list of Top 10 Extinct Languages in India and Asia that we provided may help you realize how devastating is the fact that one language can be easily lost. There should be something done to preserve those languages which are endangered, in order that they not become extinct. Though for some of them all we know today is their name, maybe this text will motivate you to investigate more, so we proudly bring you the list of top 10 extinct languages in India and Asia.

10. Galatian Language

Extinct: 6^th Century

Galatian language was spoken on the territory of today’s Turkey, and it was used by Galatians. It is a Celtic language that belongs to the family of Indo-European languages, and the most interesting thing and probably one of the reasons why the language became extinct is the fact that Galatians were mostly bilingual, speaking Greek besides their own language. It has been noted that they spoke it even in the 1^st century as well, since there were letters from Paul the Apostle written to Galatians in Greek, which means that they probably struggled a lot to preserve their own language. Eventually, they completely assimilated, to the point of losing the language in the 6^th century.

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9. Gogureyo Language

Extinct: 8^th Century

At number 9 on our list of extinct languages in India and Asia we have Gogureyo language that was spoken on the territory of today’s Korea, and it was actually the main language spoken by the Gogureyo Empire, which was one of the famous Three Empires of Korea. It belongs to the family of Buyeo languages and it was similar to many other languages that were spoken at the time. Though the empire remained in force somewhat until the 7^th century, this language remained spoken one century after that. It was only used by the people who remained alive from the final crash of the kingdom, but the death of the last speaker meant the complete extinct of the language as well.

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8. Bactrian Language

Extinct: 10^th Century

Up next in our list of extinct languages in India and Asia we have the language that belonged to the family of Indo-European group of languages, and it was spoken during the rules of the empires such as Kushan and Hephthalite. The territory where these empires were present was the territory of the Central Asia, more precisely the parts of today’s Afganistan. However, the influence of the official language Dari was strong enough to make this one disappear. Recently, many legal documents and letters written in Bactrian were discovered, and that discovery contributed to getting to know more about this extinct language.

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7. Old Azeri Language

Extinct: 17^th Century

We are continuing our list of extinct languages in India and Asia with Old Azeri, also known as simply Azeri that is one of the languages that were spoken in the Iranian part of Azerbaijan. The language belongs to the family of Indo-European group of language, and is actually the part of Indo-Iranian languages. The language was officially spoken in this area until the 17^th century, but centuries before that it started slowly being replaced with Azerbaijani, being a Turkic language which is even now spoken there. The language is considered to be similar to Talysh and Tati languages, which are even today spoken in the northwestern region of Iran.

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6. Arin Language

Extinct: 18^th century

Spoken in the territory of the North Asia, more precisely, Siberia, this language belonged to the family of Dené–Yeniseian languages. This group of languages actually consisted of 6 different languages, out of which today only Ket remained in existence. People who spoke Arin lived along the Yenisei River, and called themselves Ar or Ara, which is how the language got its name. However, since they never were a huge community, the language did not have many chances to survive since they went through the process of assimilation with the surrounding nations, which brought to the complete loss of Arin in the 18^th century.

5. Tambora Language

Extinct: 19^th Century

The 5^th place on our list of top 10 extinct languages in India and Asia goes to Tambora language, and there are various reasons for that. It is not quite clear to which group of languages Tambora language belongs, so at many places it is just marked as not being classified at all, though it is mostly similar to those languages which belong to Austronesian language family. It was spoken in Southeast Asia by the people of the Tambora culture who were mostly traders and sailors, on the territory of today’s Indonesia. The eruption of Mount Tambora that occurred in 1815 destroyed the whole village, and the language as well did not remain in use long after it.

4. Ahom Language

Extinct: 19^th – 20^th Century

This language number 4 in our list of extinct languages in India and Asia used to be spoken in the region of Assam, India, and it belonged to the family of Tai-Kadai languages. The people who used it were also called Ahom people, and they actually originated in China, but they eventually migrated to this part of India. The interesting thing about this language is the fact that, even though it stopped being used as a spoken language in the 19^th century, there were many strivings to revive it into the 20^th century. The literature written in Ahom also played a great role in helping it to survive a little bit longer, since there were many traditional songs written in it, as well as poetry and prose.

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3. Rankgas Language

Extinct: Early 20^th Century

Rankgas, the Rangas language ranks 3rd in our list of extinct languages in India and Asia and it was a West Himalayish language that belonged to Sino-Tibetan group of languages, and was spoken by Rangas people who lived in Uttarakhand region of the northern India. However, since Rangas people lives near Kumauni people, they soon started assimilating, accepting their culture, and most importantly, the language. This is the main reason why Rankas soon started being endangered, with not many speakers left, to the point of completely dying with the last person who spoke it, approximately at the very beginning of the 20^th century.

2. Ubykh Language

Extinct: Late 20^th Century

Ubykh people who lived on the eastern coast of the Black sea spoke the language named Ubykh as well, and it belonged to the family of Northwest Caucasian languages. They were Muslims who needed to flee to Turkey due to Russian rule in the 19^th century, which is one of the main reasons why the language became endangered, since people started using the Turkish language in most of the cases. Ubykh was a very rich language, and it is estimated that there were 50,000 speakers some centuries ago. 1992 was the year when the language became completely extinct, with the death of its last speaker, Tevfik Esenç.

1. Pazeh Language

Extinct: 21^st Century

Pazeh belongs to the family of Austronesian group of languages, and it is actually the part of the Northwest Formosan language. The other dialect quite close to Pazeh is called Kulun. Pazeh language is one of the most recently extinct languages, since the last person who spoke it died in 2010. Her name was Pan Jin-yu, and she was one of the Taiwanese aboriginal people. The main reason this language completely disappeared is the fact they replaced it with Hoklo Taiwanese language. Eventually, with Pazeh language, and all of the interesting details about it, we finish the list of top 10 extinct languages in India and Asia.