The Endangered languages of the Andaman Islands: Reconstructing the knowledge-base of the Pre-Neolithic tribes of India
Professor Anvita Abbi
Centre for Linguistics, School of Language, Linguistics and Culture Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, India and Visiting Scholar, The Cairns Institute
November 2010
About the Seminar
Latest research by geneticists indicates that the aboriginals of the Andamanese Islands are descendants of some early Paleolithic colonizers of South East Asia. They are survivors of the first migration out of Africa that took place some 70,000 years before present. The present talk details our recent attempts at documenting some highly endangered languages of the Andaman Islands, i.e. Jarawa, Onge and Great Andamanese. As languages are succinct witnesses of the diverse and varying ways in which the human cognitive faculties perceive the world, their grammars and dictionaries are rich sources of information about the unique world-views of the speakers of these languages. Languages not only manifest various ecological and archeological signatures of the communities that maintain close ties to their environments, but are also important repositories of our shared human history and civilization. The present talk showcased our recently compiled multilingual and multiscriptal interactive dictionary and ethnographic account of endemic birds of the Present Great Andamanese language. The talk exposed the listeners to the original sound recordings of the native speakers of the dying language.