25 May 2026

The last known speaker of Ubykh, a language with 84 consonant phonemes (more than any other recorded language), was a Turkish shepherd named Tevfik Esenc. When he died in 1992, he knew he was the last. He had requested his epitaph read: 'This is the grave of Tevfik Esenc. He was the last person able to speak the language they called Ubykh.'