Kusunda

Kusunda is a language isolate spoken by a handful of people among the Kusunda community of western and central Nepal, in districts including Dang, Pyuthan and Tanahun. Earlier proposals attempted to connect it to the Tibeto-Burman, Andamanese or Munda languages, but research by David Watters established it as lexically, grammatically and phonologically distinct from its neighbors, and it is now treated as a genuine isolate. The language is critically endangered: it was presumed extinct after the death of a fluent speaker in 2018, and only a small number of documented speakers remain, with revival classes underway among the wider Kusunda community.