Koro is a Tibeto-Burman language spoken by about 1,000 people in Arunachal Pradesh in north-eastern India. Until recently it was unknown outside this region and was discovered by a team of linguists who are part of the National Geographic’s Enduring Voices Project, which aims to document endangered languages [source].
The linguists started documenting two other little-known languages, Aka and Miji, in 2008, and initially thought that Koro was a dialect of Aka. However they soon realized that Koro was very different from Aka and was in fact a separate language. Koro speakers consider themselves part of the Aka community, and apparently didn’t think they spoke a distinct language [source].
Obrigado to Renato Figueiredo for letting me know about this story.
