The new language, Koro, is spoken by about a thousand people in Arunachal Pradesh (map), a state for which little linguistic data exist, due to restrictive entry policies, according to the linguists behind the findings.

(See pictures of Koro speakers.)

Koro belongs to the Tibeto-Burman language family, which includes 400 languages such as Tibetan and Burmese. About 150 Tibeto-Burman languages are found in India, but a team with the National Geographic Society's Enduring Voices Project discovered that Koro was distinct from all other languages in its family. (The Society owns National Geographic News.)

The linguists happened upon the language in 2008 while researching another two poorly known languages—Aka