A Question for Linguists: Isolates?

Question

Hi!
I'd like to find out what all the isolate languages are in the world; I only know of Basque.
If you can tell me of any other isolates out there (and maybe where they are from, and anything else about them you know?) I'd be really greatful. :)
Thank you very much!

Answer 1

The BBC (a more reliable source than Wikipedia) talks a little about linguistic isolates. It mentions Ket (spoken in Siberia), Japanese, Basque, Haida (spoken in Alaska and British Colombia), and Hazda (spoken in Tanzania). Korean was once thought to be an isolate, but now it is thought be to be in the same family as Turkish, Mongolian and Kazakh.

Of course, these aren't the only isolates, but they're a few to add to your list. The BBC also says, "Linguists believe that most isolates will one day be proved to have some as yet undiscovered links with other languages. They will turn out to have families after all... There are plenty of other [isolates], mostly spoken by dwindling numbers of people in remote areas of the globe. This means that many will die out before they are ever studied or recorded properly; most will probably be extinct before their isolation can ever be determined as truthful or not."

Answer 2

I know of 3 more:
Japanese is considered an isolate though it
bears some resemblance to Korean.
Another is Burushaski, a language spoken
by the Hunzakuts in northwest Pakistan.
Finally, Ainu is spoken by a few people
on the island of Hokkaido in northern Japan.
Wikipedia has an excellent article on this
which shows every known isolate in the world.
Here's the website:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_isolate
Oddly, this site lists Korean as an isolate,
but omits Japanese.

Answer 3

Celtic
Breton
Irish Gaelic
Scottish Gaelic
Welsh
Germanic
Afrikaans
Danish
Dutch
Frisian
Old English
Modern English
German
Icelandic
Norwegian
Swedish
Greek
Indo-Iranian
Kurdish
Romany
Sanskrit
Romance
Catalan
French
Italian
Latin
Lombard
Portuguese
Rumanian
Spanish
Slavic
Czech
Russian
Polish
Slovak
Serbo-Croatian
Non-Indo-European
Afro-Asiatic
Ancient Egyptian
Hebrew
Maltese
Altaic
Japanese
Turkish
Austronesian
Hawaiian
Indonesian
Maori
Tahitian
Tagalog
Dravdian
Brahui
Eskimo-Aleut
Canadian Inuit
Isolates
Basque
Penutian
Mayan
Pidgins and Creoles
Papiamento
Sranen
Niger-Kordofanian
Swahili
Tswana
Yoruba
Zulu
Sino-Tibetan
Chinese
Uralic
Estonian
Finnish
Hungarian
Artificial
Esperanto

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Isolate Languages

There are a number of languages which have never been identified as part of some larger group. The best known of these is Basque.
Basque I hope this is helpful, if you need more use the Yaho search engine, there will be more information there.