Gyani Maiya Sen-Kusunda (original) (raw)

Gyani Maiya Sen-Kusunda (1937 – 25 January 2020) was a Kusunda community elder from Nepal. She was presumed to be the last known speaker of Kusunda, a language isolate listed as the critically endangered language in the Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger. Sen-Kusunda could not converse with others in her community in Kusunda despite being fluent as the language fell out of use over time after the nomadic Kusunda community started to settle in villages and married outside the community. She was interviewed widely by linguists and other scholars in an effort to document the Kusunda language.