What if walking just two hours could take you to a village speaking a language as different from the previous one as Mandarin is from Swahili?
Welcome to New Guinea – an island that breaks every rule we know about language. Here, 840 languages somehow coexist in a space the size of Turkey, creating the most diverse linguistic landscape our planet has ever seen. Some have sounds that will make you question what human speech is capable of, while others use counting systems so alien they’ll reshape how you think about numbers.
But this isn’t just about exotic grammar. This is about humanity’s deepest secrets – languages so sacred that certain words are forbidden, hunters who must learn secret vocabularies, and words believed to hold magical power over life and death.
How did this impossible diversity come to exist? What happens when every neighbouring village speaks a completely unrelated language? And why are these linguistic treasures disappearing faster than we can document them?
The answers will take you from humanity’s first steps out of Africa 40,000 years ago to the mysterious secret languages that still shape daily life today. This is a story about the very limits of human communication – and what happens when those limits are pushed to their breaking point.

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Your next watch:
Frisian, mysterious cousin of English: • About the Frisian languages
Swahili, the language of international communication in Africa: • About the Swahili language

00:00 Intro
00:30 Official info
02:50 History
10:43 Writing and pronunciation
12:44 Native speakers
14:34 Language structure

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