Zackary Sholem Berger sent me a link to a page created by a friend of his (on the hilltribe.org site):
The hilltribe.org team has eight native languages, nine if you count Chinese which is spoken in Laosan’s village. Below, each of the hilltribe.org team introduces themselves in their native language. See if you can tell which languages are in the same language families.
I think the challenge in the last sentence is unlikely to be taken up successfully (how much analysis can you do from a half-minute video clip?), but it’s fantastic to see and hear these languages spoken; I’ve read about all of them and wondered what they actually sounded like. Yet another reason to be grateful for the internet!
Thanks to Zack for sending this link on, and thanks to everyone else who visits the website. As we evolve the website we are looking to do more and more coverage of these rapidly (and I mean VERY rapidly) disappearing languages. Be sure to check in from time to time.
Jon
Here is a page in which one can compare a recording of the numbers from 1 to 10 spoken for each of the tribal languages with which we work. I think that the similarities among the various language groups will be much clearer on this page.