The Andamanese languages are the various languages spoken by the

indigenous peoples There is no generally accepted definition of Indigenous peoples, although in the 21st century the focus has been on self-identification, cultural difference from other groups in a state, a special relationship with their traditional territ ...

of the Andaman Islands in the Indian Ocean. There are two known Andamanese language families, Great Andamanese and Ongan, as well as two presumed but unattested languages,

Sentinelese The Sentinelese, also known as the Sentineli and the North Sentinel Islanders, are Indigenous people who inhabit North Sentinel Island in the Bay of Bengal in the northeastern Indian Ocean. Designated a particularly vulnerable tribal group a ...

and Jangil. Although the languages in the Andaman Islands were once assumed to be in the same language family, it is now widely accepted that Great Andamanese and Ongan have no genealogical relationship. Thus, the term "Andamanese languages" is now a geographic label.

Classification

The attested Andamanese languages fall into two genetically unrelated families:Manoharan, S. (1983). "Subgrouping Andamanese group of languages." ''International Journal of Dravidian Linguistics'' XII(1): 82–95. * Great Andamanese: A moribund language family once spoken by Great Andamanese people. Today, the first language of most Great Andamanese people is

Hindi Modern Standard Hindi (, ), commonly referred to as Hindi, is the Standard language, standardised variety of the Hindustani language written in the Devanagari script. It is an official language of India, official language of the Government ...

. * Ongan: Two languages, Jarawa and Onge, spoken by roughly 670 people in 2020. In addition, there are two unattested languages: *

: Because the Sentinelese people refuse contact with outsiders, their language and exact population are unknown. There are likely at least 50 speakers, and perhaps upwards of 250. Anvita Abbi (2020) believes that Sentinelese is most likely Ongan. * Jangil: Extinct by 1920s. No ethnically Jangil people survive today. Maurice Vidal Portman observed that Jangil shared similarities with Jarawa, and believed that they were at one point the same language. The languages of the Andaman Islands have frequently been assumed to be from the same single Andamanese language family. However, the similarities between Great Andamanese and Ongan are so far mainly of a typological morphological nature, with little common vocabulary. Abbi (2009) demonstrated that the Andaman Islands have two unrelated language families: Great Andamanese and Ongan. Blevins (2007) summarizes,

Controversial classifications

Joseph Greenberg Joseph Harold Greenberg (May 28, 1915 – May 7, 2001) was an American linguist, known mainly for his work concerning linguistic typology and the genetic classification of languages. Life Early life and education Joseph Greenberg was born on M ...

proposed that the Great Andamanese languages are related to western

Papuan languages The Papuan languages are the non- Austronesian languages spoken on the western Pacific island of New Guinea, as well as neighbouring islands in Indonesia, Solomon Islands, and East Timor. It is a strictly geographical grouping, and does not imply ...

as members of a phylum he called

Indo-Pacific The Indo-Pacific is a vast biogeographic region of Earth. In a narrow sense, sometimes known as the Indo-West Pacific or Indo-Pacific Asia, it comprises the tropical waters of the Indian Ocean, the western and central Pacific Ocean, and the ...

,Greenberg, Joseph (1971). "The Indo-Pacific hypothesis." ''Current trends in linguistics vol. 8'', ed. by Thomas A. Sebeok, 807.71. The Hague: Mouton. but this is not generally accepted by other linguists. Stephen Wurm states that the lexical similarities between Great Andamanese and the West Papuan and certain languages of

Timor Timor (, , ) is an island at the southern end of Maritime Southeast Asia, in the north of the Timor Sea. The island is Indonesia–Timor-Leste border, divided between the sovereign states of Timor-Leste in the eastern part and Indonesia in the ...

"are quite striking and amount to virtual formal identity ��in a number of instances", but considers this to be due to a linguistic substratum rather than a direct relationship. Blevins (2007) proposes that the Ongan languages are related to Austronesian in an Austronesian–Ongan family, for which she has attempted to establish regular sound correspondences. The proposed connection between Austronesian and Ongan has not been supported by Austronesianists, and Robert Blust (2014) finds that Blevins' conclusions are not supported by her data: Of her first 25 reconstructions, none are reproducible using the comparative method, and Blust concludes that the grammatical comparison does not hold up. Blust, in addition, cites non-linguistic (such as cultural, archaeological, and biological) evidence against Blevins' hypothesis.

History

The indigenous peoples of the Andaman Islands have lived there for thousands of years. Although the existence of the islands and their inhabitants was long known to maritime powers and traders of the

South South is one of the cardinal directions or compass points. The direction is the opposite of north and is perpendicular to both west and east. Etymology The word ''south'' comes from Old English ''sūþ'', from earlier Proto-Germanic ''*sunþa ...

– and Southeast–Asia region, contact with these peoples was highly sporadic and very often hostile. As a result, almost nothing is recorded of them or their languages until the mid-18th century. By the late 18th century, when the British first established a colonial presence on the Andaman Islands, there were an estimated 5,000 Great Andamanese living on Great Andaman and surrounding islands, comprising 10 distinct tribes with distinct but closely related languages. From the 1860s onwards, the British established a penal colony on the islands, which led to the subsequent arrival of mainland settlers and indentured labourers, mainly from the

Indian subcontinent The Indian subcontinent is a physiographic region of Asia below the Himalayas which projects into the Indian Ocean between the Bay of Bengal to the east and the Arabian Sea to the west. It is now divided between Bangladesh, India, and Pakista ...

. This coincided with the massive population reduction of the Andamanese due to outside diseases. One of the first accounts in English of the languages was by the early phonetician Alexander John Ellis, who presented to the Philological Society on the South Andamanese languages on his retirement. This presentation was later adapted into a ''Report of Researches into the Language of the South Andaman Island''. By the beginning of the 20th century most of these populations were greatly reduced in numbers, and the various linguistic and tribal divisions among the Great Andamanese effectively ceased to exist, despite a census of the time still classifying the groups as separate.Radcliffe-Brown, A. R. (1922). ''The Andaman Islanders: A study in social anthropology.'' Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Their linguistic diversity also suffered as the surviving populations intermingled with one another, and some also intermarried with Karen (Burmese) and Indian settlers. By the latter part of the 20th century, the majority of Great Andamanese languages had become extinct. At the start of the 21st century only about 50 or so individuals of Great Andamanese descent remained, resettled to a single small island ( Strait I.). About half of these individuals speak what may be considered a modified version (or creole) of Great Andamanese, based mainly on Aka-Jeru.Abbi, Anvita (2008). "Is Great Andamanese genealogically and typologically distinct from Onge and Jarawa?" ''Language Sciences'', This modified version has been called "Present Great Andamanese" by some scholars,Abbi, Anvita (2006). ''Endangered Languages of the Andaman Islands.'' Germany: Lincom GmbH. but also may be referred to simply as "Jero" or "Great Andamanese".

increasingly serves as their primary language, and is the only language for around half of them.Abbi, Anvita, Bidisha Som, and Alok Das (2007)
"Where Have All The Speakers Gone? A Sociolinguistic Study of The Great Andamanese"
''Indian Linguistics'' 68.3–4:325–343
Archived
2021-07-19 at the

Wayback Machine The Wayback Machine is a digital archive of the World Wide Web founded by Internet Archive, an American nonprofit organization based in San Francisco, California. Launched for public access in 2001, the service allows users to go "back in ...

. The Ongan languages survive mainly because of the greater isolation of the peoples who speak them. This isolation has been reinforced by an outright hostility towards outsiders and extreme reluctance to engage in contact with them by South Andamanese tribes, particularly the

and Jarawa. The Sentinelese have been so resistant that their language remains entirely unknown to outsiders.

Lexicon

Abbi (2009) lists the following lexical items for Onge, Jarawa, and Great Andamanese, showing that Ongan and Great Andamanese are distinct language families sharing few lexical similarities. :

References

Bibliography

*Abbi, Anvita. 2006. ''Endangered Languages of the Andaman Islands''. LINCOM Studies in Asian Linguistics, 64. München: Lincom Europa. *Burenhult, Niclas. 1996. ''Deep linguistic prehistory with particular reference to Andamanese. '' Working Papers 45, 5–24. Lund University: Department of Linguistics. *Man, E.H. **''Dictionary of the South Andaman Language'', British India Press: Bombay 1923. ** On the Aboriginal Inhabitants of the Andaman Islands. ''The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland'', Vol. 12, 1883. *Manoharan, S. 1997. "Pronominal Prefixes and Formative Affixes in Andamanese Language." Anvita Abbi (ed.). ''The Languages of Tribal and Indigenous Peoples of India. The Ethnic Space''. Delhi: Motilal Benarsidass. *Portman, M.V. 1887. ''A Manual of the Andamanese Languages.'' London: W.H. Allen & Co. *Temple, Richard C. ''A Grammar of the Andamanese Languages, being Chapter IV of Part I of the Census Report on the Andaman and Nicobar Islands'', Superintendent's Printing Press:

Port Blair Port Blair (), officially named Sri Vijaya Puram, is the capital city of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, a union territory of India in the Bay of Bengal. It is also the local administrative sub-division (''tehsil'') of the islands, the headqu ...

1902. *Zide, Norman Herbert & V. Pandya. 1989. "A Bibliographical Introduction to Andamanese Linguistics." ''Journal of the American Oriental Society'' 109: 639–51.

External links

South Asia Bibliography – AndamaneseAndaman Association
* Anvita Abbi, Jawaharlal Nehru University
The Andamanese Language Family (I) & (II)Burenhult's Paper on Andamanese
{{DEFAULTSORT:Andamanese Languages Languages of India Proposed language families