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Missing image Andaman_tribal_&_linguistic_map.jpg Ethnolinguistic map of the precolonial Andaman Islands (drawn 1902) The Andamanese languages form a language family spoken in the Andaman Islands, a union territory of India. There are two recognized subfamilies, Great Andamanese and South Andamanese. The Great Andamanese languages are divided into Central and Northern groups. All of the Great Andamanese languages except Pucikwar became extinct in the 20th century, as the Andamanese have become primarily speakers of Hindi; the South Andamanese languages survive mainly because of their greater isolation, as well as the extreme hostility their speakers long maintained (and, in the case of the Sentinelese, still maintain) towards outside contact.
GrammarThe Andamanese languages are quite agglutinative, with an extensive prefix and suffix system. Possibly their most distinctive characteristic is a 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 association); thus, for instance, the "aka-" at the beginning of so many Andamanese languages' names is actually the prefix for objects related to the tongue. An adjectival example can be given by the various forms of yop, "pliable, soft", in Aka-Bea; 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-beri-nga "clever" (hand-good); ig-beri-nga "sharp-sighted" (eye-good); aka-beri-nga "quick language learner" (tongue-good.) Another peculiarity of terms for body parts is that they are inalienably possessed, requiring a possessive pronoun prefix to complete them, so one cannot say "head" alone, but only "my, or his, or your, etc. head". 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):
The languages and their classificationThe languages in the family include:
"Long-ranger" linguists such as Joseph H. Greenberg have seen these languages as distant members of a phylum called Indo-Pacific, together with Papuan languages. Other linguists consider these languages to have no known relatives. The Andaman Islanders are physically Negritos - short-statured, peppercorn-haired, dark-skinned people found in small surviving pockets all over tropical Asia and New Guinea, and perhaps beyond. However, all other Negrito groups in Asia proper speak languages closely related to those of their non-Negrito neighbors, whereas Andamanese shows no similarity to the language even of the Nicobar Islands. This has led some to speculate that the Andamanese languages may be representative of the (or one of the) original languages spoken by the Asian Negritos before other groups took over their areas, leaving them in their current fragmented distribution. SamplesThe following poem in Aka-Bea was written by a chief, Jambu, after he was freed from a six-month jail term for manslaughter.
Literally:
Translation:
(translation: E. H. Man, 1902.) Note, however, that, as seems to be typical of Andamanese poetry, the words and sentence structure have been somewhat abbreviated to obtain the desired rhythm. As another example, we give part of a creation myth in Oko-Juwoi, reminiscent of Prometheus:
Literally:
Translated (by Portman):
Bibliography
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