In Siberia a linguist from Swarthmore has discovered some 35-40 speakers of this previously-thought-extinct language. I can't find anything else on it except this audio interview from NPR (scroll down):

http://www.npr.org/rundowns/rundown.php?prgId=2&prgDate=3-Feb-2004

cool!
but from your subject I thought this was going to be about birth order...

"Middle Chylum" is that part of a Hookah which is neither at the set-fire-to end nor the suck-on end but rather somewhere in between.

my, Father Steve, what a fount of wisdom on drugs you are...

Nah, Middle Chylum is a little Cotswold village tucked into the hillside below Chylum Superior and quarter of a mile up the slope from Nether Chylum. The Chylums are a couple of miles from that well-known market town, Dunny-on-the-Wold. Which is where this occurred:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/staffordshire/3457965.stm

"It doesn't appear to be vandalism or terrorism, it does appear to have been a technical problem."

Just a flash in the pan, then.

One rather wonders what would have become of anybody actually on the pan when it flashed ...

Talk about being caught with their pants down...

I'm just so glad that this thread has stayed on the interesting subject of an obscure language, once thought extinct, rather than devolving into irrelevant and even scatological subjects, as is so often the fate with such threads on lesser boards.

Faldage is right. My bad. Awaiting the assignment of penance here.

Padre

assignment of penance

I won't refer you to Jackie's post.

glad that this thread has stayed on the interesting subject of an obscure language,
Oops-- . Isn't it neat how, when we think we know so much, a new "discovery" is made?

I haven't listened to the report yet, but, what do we know about this language? Is it related to any other languages? Is it an isolate?

It's in the Turkic family and was severely repressed (as were all 'native' languages) during the Soviet regime. The oldest speaker is in her 90s and the youngest in his 50s.

As for the rest of y'all: ()

Edit: I had the brilliant idea of looking at the college's web site, et Viola's yer aunt! Here's the full story:

http://www.swarthmore.edu/news/releases/04/harrison.html/

In all seriousness, is it possible for a language to survive, enabling information of the type mentioned in the article to be retained, if new generations do not wish to trouble to learn it? Can it be kept and bred in captivity, as it were? I would think not.

Faldage, our doughty non-prescriptivist supreme, I'm sure would agree that, as a matter of principle, no one should even attempt it. After all, if words drop out of use so be it...

Father Steve on the other hand...

I think there is much that will be lost when the last speaker dies, but the comments on the unique number system and grammatical structures raise some interesting questions and aspects of these can be saved in some sort of preserved under glass mode, potentially useful to linguists and students of the mind.

For more info on endangered languages:

http://www.ogmios.org/home.htm
http://www.ling.yale.edu/~elf/
http://www.helsinki.fi/~tasalmin/europe_index.html

Hmm. A cilam is also a simple clay pipe. I bought one in Kathmandu. The Chilam Balam is a sacred text of the Maya.