Linguists have come to know about an endangered language, called Koro, which is spoken by less than 1000 people in the mountains of northeastern India.

The discovery was made by linguists with the National Geographic’s Enduring Voices project. The linguists were traveling in the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh to discover more about Aka and Miji languages. But, to their extreme surprise they started hearing a third, unknown language, Koro.

Koro, which was not listed in any of the available scientific literature, belongs to the Tibeto-Burman language family. Languages that belong to the Tibeto-Burman language family are mostly spoken the east, central, south and southeast Asia.

The newly discovered language is neither a dialect nor a sister language close to Hruso-Aka language. It is transmitted orally as it is unwritten.

Associate professor of linguistics, K. David Harrison, at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, said that Koro is an endangered language as few of the 800 Koro speakers are under the age of 20.

Speaking on Koro, Mr. Harrison added, "Koro brings an entirely different perspective, history, mythology, technology and grammar to what was known before."

The northeast part of India is well-known as a hotspot of language diversity.