Only around 800 people are believed to speak the Tibeto-Burman language, and few of them are under the age of 20, according to the researchers who discovered Koro during an expedition as part of National Geographic's "Enduring Voices" project.The language, they said, has never been written down.
"We found something that was making its exit, was on the way out," said National Geographic fellow Gregory Anderson, one of the leaders of the expedition that discovered Koro.
"If we had waited 10 years to make the trip, we might not have come across close to the number of speakers we found," he said.
The Enduring Voices is fighting a losing battle, attempting to record and preserve as many of the 6910 known human languages as possible before they're lost to the ages. According to the article, around half of them are already endangered. Talk about a bittersweet job description.
