There are around 6000 to 7000 natural languages spoken across the globe. But is there a more precise count? Ethnologue suggests a total of 7139 languages that are known, but there are perhaps more that we do not know about. These languages’ existence have largely been attested by researchers and their publications, giving us languages from Arabic to Zuni. But what happens when this attestation comes under dispute? Or worse yet, what happens if there is pretty much scant evidence of such a language existing?

This is where we get into the spurious language territory. Unlike actually attested languages like Kanakanabu and Ndebele, spurious languages are usually reported to exist in some publications, but refuted in others, and perhaps going insofar as being proven not to exist. Another way spurious languages occur is when evidence pointing towards a certain language’s existence is scarce or scant, due to the lack of studies, or a scarcity of data concerning that particular language. The latter could very well occur for much of the world’s indigenous languages, which are usually spoken in more remote or obscure regions, or indigenous people groups who might refuse contact with outsiders, such as the uncontacted peoples of the Amazon. These create a scarcity or lack of language data that may serve as evidence of a language’s existence, which could be disputed or refuted. Sometimes, if a language’s existence is uncertain, it would also be referred to as a dubious language as well.

Languages can also be found to be outright hoaxes, which is particularly prevalent in some works of the 19th and early 20th centuries. For instance, there is the Kukurá language, which was fabricated by a Kainguá interpreter when he was working for a Czech ethnographer named A. V. Frič in the Rio Verde region in Brazil in 1901. Three decades later, a word list of that language was published, only to be found as a fabrication by the ethnologist Curt Nimuendajú the following year, when he visited to same region in Brazil. The word list was actually filled with fake words and Guaraní. Additionally, the actual language spoken in the area was Ofayé, which is spoken by only 2 native speakers today.

Lastly, there is also the case where these supposed languages are found to be either variants, duplicates, or are merely regional descriptors of other languages spoken in the region. In most cases, these languages may be named after the people group that speak them, such as the Lua’ ‘language’, which actually refers to the languages spoken by the Lua people in Laos, who speak two closely-related Mon-Khmer languages called Mal and Prai. These languages may be grouped together under the Lua’ umbrella, and purported to be the language spoken by the Lua people, leading to Lua’ becoming a spurious language.

Another example is Chimakum, a spurious language which was found to be a duplicate of the Chemakum language once spoken in the Washington state. Similarly, there is the Yug language, which is also alternatively written as Yugh, the latter of which was dubbed a spurious language as a duplicate entry. Other examples include some spurious languages in the island of New Guinea, but actually are just locations where field surveys were conducted, and are not truly representative of the actual languages which are spoken there.

Today, there are a couple of major catalogues that keep track of spurious languages, making regular retirements of language names that are deemed spurious, mostly with justifications attached (duplicates, lack of evidence, etc.). This would also remove or repurpose the codes originally assigned to those retired languages as well. These catalogues are Ethnologue and Glottolog, although there is also the ISO 639-3 which also retires codes from languages which are deemed spurious. One example is the code tyl, originally used to refer to Thu Lao in Glottolog. This was retired after the finding that this entry was actually a duplicate of the Dai Zhuang language spoken in Yunnan, China.

So this has been a little introduction to the languages of the world that just might not be if at all. With major catalogues revising this list of languages regularly, we might expect some changes over time as evidence for and against some of these purported languages surface. Following this short essay today, we will return to the regular schedule of actual attested languages next week.

Further reading

Campbell, L., Grondona, V. (2012) The Indigenous Languages of South America: A Comprehensive Guide, Walter de Gruyter. ISBN 978-3-11-025803-5.

Campbell, L. (2024) ‘Unclassified and Spurious Languages’, The Indigenous Languages of the Americas: History and Classification, New York, Oxford Academic. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197673461.003.0005.