North Andaman languages

By the end of the 18th century, when the British first settled on the Andaman Islands, there were about 5,000 Aborigines living on the Greater Andaman and surrounding islands, consisting of 10 different tribes with different, but closely related languages. Since the 1860s, the creation of a permanent English penal colony began and the subsequent arrival of immigrants, immigrants and wage earners, this reduced the number of Andamans to 19 people in 1961 ^[1] .

Since then, the number of Aborigines has grown slightly, reaching fifty-two by 2010 ^[2] , but by 1994, seven out of ten tribes had already disappeared ^{[3] [3]} . Also, the division among the surviving tribes ( Yereva , Bo, and Kari) virtually disappeared ^[4] due to mixed marriages and relocation to a much smaller territory on Straight Island. Some of them became related with Karen ( Myanmar ) and Indian settlers. Hindi is increasingly acting as the main language, and is the only language for about half of the Andaman ^{[5] [6]} . The last known native speaker Bo died in 2010 at the age of 85 ^[2] .

About half of the population now speak a new language (mixed or koyne ) of the North-Adaman family, based mainly on aka-yereva ^[7] . This modified version is called “modern North-Adaman language” ^{[8] [9]} , but may also be referred to simply as “Jero” or “ North-Adaman ”.

The North Andaman languages ​​are agglutinative languages, with an extensive system of prefixes and suffixes ^{[8] [10]} . They have a distinctive system of noun classes based largely on body parts; each noun and adjective can receive a prefix , according to which a part of the body is associated with it (based on form, or functional connection) ^[9] . For example, “aka” - at the beginning of the name of the language - is a prefix for objects related to the language ^[10] . An example of an adjective can manifest itself in various forms of the word “yop”, “flexible, soft”, in aka-bea ^[10] :

• Roller or sponge - ot-yop "circle-soft", with a prefix from the word related to the head or heart.
• A cane - ôto-yop , "flexible", with a prefix from a word meaning a long thing.
• Pencil - aka-yop , "pointed", with a language prefix.
• A fallen tree is ar-yop , “rotten”, with a prefix of a limb or vertical thing.

Similarly, beri-nga is “good”:

• un-bēri-ŋa “smart” (good hand).
• ig-bēri-ŋa "sharp -sighted " (eye-good).
• aka-bēri-ŋa “knowing languages” (good language)
• ot-bēri-ŋa “virtuous” (head / heart-good)

Prefixes:

Parts of the body are inalienable accessories and require the mandatory use of the possessive prefix : you can not say "head", but only "mine, his, yours, etc. head" ^[9] .

The main pronouns are almost identical in all the Northern Andaman languages; aka-eya ​​will serve as an example (pronouns taking into account their main prefixes):

“This” and “that” differ in k- and t- .

Judging by the available sources, in Andamanic languages ​​there are only two quantitative numbers, one and two , the rest is related to the quantity of vocabulary - “one more”, “a few more” and “all” ^[10]

Languages ​​spoken in the Andaman Islands are divided into two distinct families, large Andaman and South Andaman, as well as an unidentified language, Sentinel . They are usually regarded as related. However, this similarity between the large Andaman and South Andaman is still mainly based on typological morphology , there is little known general vocabulary. Researcher Joseph Greenberg expressed doubts about the validity of large Andaman languages ​​as a family ^[11] ; Anvita Abby (2008) ^[7] designates the surviving North Adaman languages ​​as isolated .

The Great Andaman Languages ^[12] :

• Large andaman
  • Southern
    • aka bea or bea (†)
    • Akar Balava or Balava (†)
  • Central
    • aka-sneakers or sneakers (†)
    • aka stake or count (†)
    • eye juvai or juvai (†)
    • a-beamikvar or beamikvar (†)
  • Northern
    • aka chariar or chariar (†)
    • aka bark or bark (†)
    • aka yereva or yereva (almost extinct); 36 speakers in 1997
    • aka bo or bo (†)

Joseph Greenberg proposed attributing the North Andaman languages ​​to the Western Papuan languages as an element of the hypothetical Indo-Pacific macro-family ^[11] , but this hypothesis is not supported by other linguists. notes that the lexical similarity between the great Andaman, West Papuan and some languages ​​of Timor “is simply amazing, and the amount of virtual formal identity [...] in some cases”, but believes that this is possible because of the language substrate, and not direct relationship ^[13] .

Number of speakers in languages ​​from 1901 to 1994 according to the census ^[14] :

1901 census

aka kari: 39

aka bark: 96

aka bo: 48

aka yereva: 218

aka-kede: 59

aka koy: 11

Oka Juwai: 48

aka puchikvar: 50

aka balava: 19

aka bea: 37

1994 censuses

aka yereva: 19

aka bo: 15

aka kari: 2

(“Local”: 4)

• Yadav, Yogendra. 1985. "Great Andamanese: a preliminary study." Pacific Linguistics , Series A, No. 67: 185-214. Canberra: Australian National University.