1313: Linguistic Continuity: Bo Jul 15, 2018

One of the best ways to preserve a language is for its speakers to have a low population and live in relative isolation. Icelandic is a famous example of a language which has gone with very few changes over a thousand years, but other islands are home to even older languages. Bo is a language that was spoken on the Andaman Islands, off the coast of India, from pre-Neolithic times—several thousand years—up until 2010 when the last fluent speaker died. Many languages are spoken in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, many of which are endangered, but often they remain relatively preserved over long periods of time due to relative isolation and low population, which keeps the chances of change minimal, as those are two of the greatest factors for linguistic changes.

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