Sentinelese language

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Sentinelese
Spoken in:	India
Region:	North Sentinel Island
Total speakers:	approx. 250 (median estimate)
Language family:	Unclassified
Language codes
ISO 639-1:	none
ISO 639-2:	mis
ISO 639-3:	std
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. See IPA chart for English for an English-​based pronunciation key.

The Sentinelese language is the language of the Sentinelese of North Sentinel Island in the Andaman Islands, India. Virtually nothing is known of the language, and no word lists or language samples have been collected by researchers. It is presumably an Andamanese language, but how closely it may be related to other languages of that family is unknown.

Since interactions with the Sentinelese have been extremely rare, brief and generally shunned by the people themselves, there has been no material or even wordlists published on their language, and hence there can be no classification. On the two documented occasions when Onge and Aka-Bea individuals were taken to North Sentinel Island in order to attempt communication, in neither case were they able to recognise any of the language spoken by the inhabitants, though the exchanges were admittedly brief and hostile. However, based on what little is known about similarities in culture and technology, and their geographical proximity, it is supposed that their history and language is more closely related to the Onge-Jarawa ("South Andamanese") branch than that of the Great Andamanese.

[edit] References