Great Andamanese languages

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Great Andamanese
EthnicityGreat Andamanese people
Geographic
distribution		Formerly on Great Andaman Island
Linguistic classificationOne of the world's primary language families[1]
Subdivisions
  • Aka-Bea (Bea) †
  • Akar-Bale (Bale) †
  • Aka-Kede (Kede) †
  • Aka-Kol (Kol) †
  • Oko-Juwoi (Juwoi) †
  • A-Pucikwar (Pucikwar) †
  • Aka-Cari (Chari) †
  • Aka-Kora (Kora) †
  • Aka-Jeru (Jeru)
  • Aka-Bo (Bo) †
ISO 639-3(Great Andamanese, Mixed) gac (Great Andamanese, Mixed)
Glottologgrea1241
ELPMixed Great Andamanese
Andamanese languages-map.jpg
Ethnolinguistic map of the precolonial Andaman Islands. The languages with prefixes (which mean "language") are Great Andamanese.

The Great Andamanese languages are a nearly extinct language family once spoken by the Great Andamanese peoples of the Andaman Islands (India), in the Indian Ocean.

History[]

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. This coincided with the massive population reduction of the Andamanese due to outside diseases, to a low of 19 individuals in 1961.[2]

Since then their numbers have rebounded somewhat, reaching 52 by 2010.[3] However, by 1994 there were no remembers of any but the northern lects,[4] and divisions among the surviving tribes (Jeru, Kora, Bo and Cari) had effectively ceased to exist[5] due to intermarriage and resettlement to a much smaller territory on Strait Island. Some of them also intermarried with Karen (Burmese) and Indian settlers. Hindi serves as their primary language.[6][7] Some of the population spoke a koine based mainly on Aka-Jeru, but even this is only partially remembered and no longer a language of daily use.[8][9][10]

Aka-Kora became fully extinct in November 2009, when its last rememberer, Boro Sr, died.[11] The last semi-fluent speaker of Aka-Jeru (and of the koine), Nao Jr., also died in 2009.[12] At this point, no Great Andamanese remained who remembered much of their mother tongue. The last rememberer of Aka-Bo died in 2010 at age 85.[3] The last rememberer of Aka-Cari, a woman called Licho, died from chronic tuberculosis in April 2020 in Shadipur, Port Blair.[13][14] As of reports published in 2020, there remained three heritage-speakers of the koine, which they called Jeru.[15]

Grammar[]

The Great Andamanese languages are agglutinative languages, with an extensive prefix and suffix system.[9][16] They have a distinctive noun class system based largely on body parts, in which every noun and adjective may take a prefix according to which body part it is associated with (on the basis of shape, or functional association).[10] Thus, for instance, the *aka- at the beginning of the language names is a prefix for objects related to the tongue.[16] An adjectival example can be given by the various forms of yop, "pliable, soft", in Aka-Bea:[16]

  • A cushion or sponge is ot-yop "round-soft", from the prefix attached to words relating to the head or heart.
  • A cane is ôto-yop, "pliable", from a prefix for long things.
  • A stick or pencil is aka-yop, "pointed", from the tongue prefix.
  • A fallen tree is ar-yop, "rotten", from the prefix for limbs or upright things.

Similarly, beri-nga "good" yields:

  • un-bēri-ŋa "clever" (hand-good).
  • ig-bēri-ŋa "sharp-sighted" (eye-good).
  • aka-bēri-ŋa "good at languages" (tongue-good).
  • ot-bēri-ŋa "virtuous" (head/heart-good).

The prefixes are:

Bea Balawa? Bajigyâs? Juwoi Kol
head/heart ot- ôt- ote- ôto- ôto-
hand/foot ong- ong- ong- ôn- ôn-
mouth/tongue âkà- aka- o- ókô- o-
torso (shoulder to shins) ab- ab- ab- a- o-
eye/face/arm/breast i-, ig- id- ir- re- er-
back/leg/butt ar- ar- ar- ra- a-
waist ôto-

Abbi (2013: 80) lists the following body part prefixes in Great Andamanese.

Class Partonomy of the human body Body class marker
1 mouth and its semantic extensions a=
2 major external body parts ɛr=
3 extreme ends of the body (e.g., toes and fingernails) oŋ=
4 bodily products and part-whole relationships ut=
5 organs inside the body e=
6 parts designating round shape or sexual organs ara=
7 parts for legs and related terms o= ~ ɔ=

Body parts are inalienably possessed, requiring a possessive adjective prefix to complete them, so one cannot say "head" alone, but only "my, or his, or your, etc. head".[10]

The basic pronouns are almost identical throughout the Great Andamanese languages; Aka-Bea will serve as a representative example (pronouns given in their basic prefixal forms):

I, my d- we, our m-
thou, thy ŋ- you, your ŋ-
he, his, she, her, it, its a they, their l-

'This' and 'that' are distinguished as k- and t-.

Judging from the available sources, the Andamanese languages have only two cardinal numbers — one and two — and their entire numerical lexicon is one, two, one more, some more, and all.[16]

Phonology[]

The following is the sound system of the present-day Great Andamanese (PGA):

Vowels[17]
Front Back
Close i u
Close-mid e o
Open-mid ɛ ɔ
Open ɑ
Consonants[18][17]
Bilabial Labio-
dental 		Dental Alveolar Retroflex Palatal Velar
Plosive plain p b t d ʈ ɖ c ɟ k
aspirated pʰ tʰ ʈʰ cʰ kʰ
Nasal m n ɲ ŋ
Rhotic ɾ~r (ɽ)
Fricative (ɸ) (β) (f) s ʃ (x)
Lateral (lʷ) l (ʎ)
Approximant w j

It is noted that a few sounds would have changed among more recent speakers, perhaps due to the influence of Hindi. Older speakers tended to have different pronunciations than among the more younger speakers. The consonant sounds of /pʰ, kʰ, l/ were common among older speakers to pronounce them as /ɸ~f~β, x, lʷ/. The lateral /l/ sound may have also been pronounced as /ʎ/. Sounds such as a labio-velar approximant /w/, only occur within words or can be a word-final, and cannot occur as a word-initial consonant. The sounds /ɽ, β/ can occur as allophones of /r, b/.

Classification[]

The languages spoken in the Andaman islands fall into two clear families, Great Andamanese and Ongan, plus one unattested language, Sentinelese. These are generally seen as related. However, the similarities between Great Andamanese and Ongan are so far mainly of a typological morphological nature, with little demonstrated common vocabulary. As a result, even long-range researchers such as Joseph Greenberg have expressed doubts as to the validity of Andamanese as a family,[19] and Abbi (2008)[8] considers the surviving Great Andamanese language to be an isolate. The Great Andaman languages are:[20]

  • Great Andamanese
    • Southern
    • Central
      • Aka-Kede or Kede (†)
      • Aka-Kol or Kol (†)
      • Oko-Juwoi or Juwoi (†)
      • A-Pucikwar or Pucikwar (†)
    • Northern
      • Aka-Cari or Chari (†)
      • Aka-Kora or Kora (†)
      • Aka-Jeru or Jeru
      • Aka-Bo or Bo (†)

Joseph Greenberg proposed that Great Andamanese is related to western Papuan languages as members of a larger phylum he called Indo-Pacific,[19] 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 "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.[21]

Names and spellings, with populations, from the 1901 and 1994 censuses were as follows:[22]

1901 census
Aka-Cari: 39
Aka-Cora: 96
Aka-Bo: 48
Aka-Jeru: 218
Aka-Kede: 59
Aka-Koi: 11
Oka-Juwoi: 48
Aka-Pucikwar: 50
Aka-Bale: 19
Aka-Bea: 37
1994 census
Aka-Jeru: 19
Aka-Bo: 15
Aka-Kari: 2
('local': 4)

Samples[]

The following poem in Aka-Bea was written by a chief, Jambu, after he was freed from a six-month jail term for manslaughter.[23]

ngô:do kûk l'àrtâ:lagî:ka,
mō:ro el:ma kâ igbâ:dàla
mō:ro el:mo lê aden:yarà
pō:-tōt läh.
Chorus: aden:yarà pō:-tōt läh.

Literally:

thou heart-sad art,
sky-surface to there looking while,
sky-surface of ripple to looking while,
bamboo spear on lean-dost.

Translation:

Thou art sad at heart,
gazing there at the sky's surface,
gazing at the ripple on the sky's surface,
leaning on the bamboo spear.

Note, however, that, as seems to be typical of Andamanese poetry, the words and sentence structure have been somewhat abbreviated or inverted in order to obtain the desired rhythmical effect.

As another example, we give part of a creation myth in Oko-Juwoi, reminiscent of Prometheus:

Kuro-t'on-mik-a

Kuro-t'on-mik-in

Mom

Mr.

Mirit-la,

Pigeon,

Bilik

God

l'ôkô-ema-t,

?-slep-t,

peakar

wood

at-lo

fire-with

top-chike

stealing-was

at

fire

laiche

the.late

Lech-lin

Lech-to

a,

he,

kotik

then

a

he

ôko-kodak-chine

?-fire-make-did

at-lo

fire-with

Karat-tatak-emi-in.

Karat-tatak-emi-at."

Kuro-t'on-mik-a Mom Mirit-la, Bilik l'ôkô-ema-t, peakar at-lo top-chike at laiche Lech-lin a, kotik a ôko-kodak-chine at-lo Karat-tatak-emi-in.

Kuro-t'on-mik-in Mr. Pigeon, God ?-slep-t, wood fire-with stealing-was fire the.late Lech-to he, then he ?-fire-make-did fire-with Karat-tatak-emi-at."

(Translated by Portman) Mr. Pigeon stole a firebrand at Kuro-t'on-mika, while God was sleeping. He gave the brand to the late Lech, who then made fires at Karat-tatak-emi.

References[]

  1. ^ Blevins, Juliette (2007), "A Long Lost Sister of Proto-Austronesian? Proto-Ongan, Mother of Jarawa and Onge of the Andaman Islands" (PDF), Oceanic Linguistics, 46 (1): 154–198, doi:10.1353/ol.2007.0015, S2CID 143141296, archived from the original (PDF) on 2011-01-11
  2. ^ Jayanta Sarkar (1990), The Jarawa, Anthropological Survey of India, ISBN 81-7046-080-8, ... The Great Andamanese population was large till 1858 when it started declining ... In 1901, their number was reduced to only 600 and in 1961 to a mere 19 ...
  3. ^ a b (2011) Lives Remembered. The Daily Telegraph, London, 10 February 2010. Accessed on 2010-02-22. Also on web.archive.org
  4. ^ A. N. Sharma (2003), Tribal Development in the Andaman Islands, page 75. Sarup & Sons, New Delhi.
  5. ^ Radcliffe-Brown, A. R. (1922). The Andaman Islanders: A study in social anthropology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  6. ^ Anosh Malekar, "The case for a linguisitic survey," Infochange Media, August 1, 2011.
  7. ^ 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.
  8. ^ a b Abbi, Anvita (2008). "Is Great Andamanese genealogically and typologically distinct from Onge and Jarawa?" Language Sciences, doi:10.1016/j.langsci.2008.02.002
  9. ^ a b Abbi, Anvita (2006). Endangered Languages of the Andaman Islands. Germany: Lincom GmbH.
  10. ^ a b c "Burenhult, Niclas (1996). "Deep linguistic prehistory with particular reference to Andamanese." Working Papers 45, 5-24. Lund University: Department of Linguistics". Archived from the original on 2016-09-17. Retrieved 2016-07-08.
  11. ^ "Andamanese tribes, languages die". The Hindu. February 5, 2010. Retrieved 2010-02-05.
  12. ^ Mixed Great Andamanese at Ethnologue (23rd ed., 2020)
  13. ^ International, Survival (1 June 2020). "The last speaker of the Sare language has died". Medium. Retrieved 28 June 2020.
  14. ^ Mourning the death of a language amid the pandemic, Straits Times, 2020 June 3
  15. ^ Aka-Jeru at Ethnologue (23rd ed., 2020)
  16. ^ a b c d Temple, Richard C. (1902). 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.
  17. ^ a b Abbi, Anvita (2013). A Grammar of the Great Andamanese Language. Brill's Studies in South and Southwest Asian Languages, Volume 4.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location (link)
  18. ^ Yadav, Yogendra (1985). Great Andamanese: a preliminary study. Canberra: The Australian National University.: Pacific Linguistics. pp. 185–214.
  19. ^ a b Greenberg, Joseph (1971). "The Indo-Pacific hypothesis." Current trends in linguistics vol. 8, ed. by Thomas A. Sebeok, 807.71. The Hague: Mouton.
  20. ^ Manoharan, S. (1983). "Subgrouping Andamanese group of languages." International Journal of Dravidian Linguistics XII(1): 82-95.
  21. ^ Wurm, S.A. (1977). New Guinea Area Languages and Language Study, Volume 1: Papuan Languages and the New Guinea Linguistic Scene. Pacific Linguistics, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University, Canberra.
  22. ^ A. N. Sharma (2003), Tribal Development in the Andaman Islands, page 62. Sarup & Sons, New Delhi.
  23. ^ Man, E.H. (1923). Dictionary of the South Andaman Language. British India Press: Bombay

Bibliography[]

  • Yadav, Yogendra. 1985. "Great Andamanese: a preliminary study." Pacific Linguistics, Series A, No. 67: 185-214. Canberra: The Australian National University.
  • Abbi, Anvita. 2011. Dictionary of the Great Andamanese language. Port Blair: Ratna Sagar.
  • Abbi, Anvita. 2013. A Grammar of the Great Andamanese Language. Brill's Studies in South and Southwest Asian Languages, Volume 4.

External links[]

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