The Bo language, ''Aka-Bo'' (also known as ''Ba''), was a

Great Andamanese The Great Andamanese are an indigenous people of the Great Andaman archipelago in the Andaman Islands. Historically, the Great Andamanese lived throughout the archipelago, and were divided into ten major tribes. Their distinct but closely relate ...

language. It was spoken on the west central coast of

North Andaman North Andaman Island is the northern island of Great Andaman of the Andaman Islands. It belongs to the North and Middle Andaman administrative district, part of the Indian union territory of Andaman and Nicobar Islands. the island is lying n ...

Radcliffe-Brown, Alfred R. (1922). ''The Andaman Islanders''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. and on North Reef Island of the

Andaman Islands The Andaman Islands () are an archipelago in the northeastern Indian Ocean about southwest off the coasts of Myanmar's Ayeyarwady Region. Together with the Nicobar Islands to their south, the Andamans serve as a maritime boundary between th ...

in India.

Name

The ''Aka-'' at the beginning of the language name is a common Great Andamanese prefix for words related to the tongue, which includes language.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.

History

The original size of the Bo tribe, by 1858 has been estimated at 200 individuals.George Weber (~2009),
Numbers
''. Chapter 7 in

''. Accessed on 2012-07-12. However, they were discovered by the colonial authorities only later, in the work leading to the 1901 census. Like other Andamanese peoples, the Bo were decimated during colonial and post-colonial times, by diseases,

alcohol Alcohol most commonly refers to: * Alcohol (chemistry), an organic compound in which a hydroxyl group is bound to a carbon atom * Alcohol (drug), an intoxicant found in alcoholic drinks Alcohol may also refer to: Chemicals * Ethanol, one of sev ...

opium Opium (or poppy tears, scientific name: ''Lachryma papaveris'') is dried latex obtained from the seed capsules of the opium poppy ''Papaver somniferum''. Approximately 12 percent of opium is made up of the analgesic alkaloid morphine, which i ...

and loss of territory. The census of 1901 recorded only 48 individuals. Census takers were told that an epidemic had come from the neighboring Kari and

Kora Kora may refer to: Places India * Kora, Bardhaman, West Bengal * Kora, Bharuch, Gujarat * Korha, Katihar, also known as Kora, in Bihar * Kora, Kendrapara, Odisha * Kora, Wardha, Maharastra * Kora, Tumakuru, Karnataka * Toyaguda, Adilabad, Telan ...

tribes, and the Bo had resorted to killing all of their own who showed symptoms. Their number was up to 62 in 1911, but then decreased to 16 in 1921 and only 6 in 1931. In 1949, any remaining Bo were relocated, with all other surviving Great Andamanese, to a reservation on

Bluff island Bluff Island may refer to the following islands: *Bluff Island (Andaman and Nicobar Islands) *Bluff Island (Antarctica), Prydz Bay, Antarctica *Bluff Island (Hong Kong) Bluff Island, indigenously known as Sha Tong Hau Shan (), also known as Ung Kon ...

. In 1969 they were moved again to a reservation on Strait Island.Rann Singh Mann (2005)
Andaman and Nicobar Tribes Restudied: Encounters and Concerns
page 149. Mittal Publications. By 1980 only three out of the 23 surviving Great Andamanese claimed to belong to the Bo tribe. By 1994 their numbers had grown to 15 (out of 40).A. N. Sharma (2003),
Tribal Development in the Andaman Islands
', page 62. Sarup & Sons, New Delhi. However, tribal identities became largely symbolic in the wake of the relocations. By 2006 the cultural and linguistic identity of the tribe had all but disappeared, due to intermarriage and other factors. The last speaker of the Bo language, a woman named Boa Senior, died at age 85 in late January, 2010.(2010)
Language lost as last member of Andaman tribe dies
'. The Daily Telegraph, London, 5 February 2010. Accessed on 2010-02-22.(2011

'' The Daily Telegraph'', London, 10 February 2010. Accessed on 2010-02-22. Als
on web.archive.org
/ref>

Extinction

Boa Sr. Boa Sr (''circa'' 2 January 1925 – 26 January 2010) was an Indian Great Andamanese elder. She was the last person fluent in the Aka-Bo language. Boa Sr is not to be confused with another Great Andamanese tribal member, Boa Jr; the two wom ...

, the last person who remembered any Bo, died on 26 January 2010, at the age of approximately 85. Boa Sr.'s mother, who died approximately forty years before her death, was the only living speaker of Bo for a long time. Other members of the Great Andamanese speech community had difficulty understanding the songs and narratives which she knew in Bo. She also spoke the Andamanese dialect of Hindi, as well as

, a mix of the ten indigenous languages of Andamans. Boa Sr. worked with

Anvita Abbi Professor Anvita Abbi (born 9 January 1949) is an Indian linguist and scholar of minority languages, known for her studies on tribal languages and other minority languages of South Asia. In 2013, she was honoured with the Padma Shri, the fourth ...

, a professor of linguistics at Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi, since 2005. Abbi studied and recorded Boa's language and songs. Boa Sr. died at a hospital in

Port Blair Port Blair () is the capital city of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, a union territory of India in the Bay of Bengal. It is also the local administrative sub-division (''tehsil'') of the islands, the headquarters for the district of South And ...

on 26 January 2010. Boa Sr., who was approximately 85 years old, was the oldest living member of the Great Andamanese tribes at the time. Boa Sr.'s death left just 52 surviving Great Andamanese people in the world, none of whom remembers any Bo. Their population is greatly reduced from the estimated 5,000 Great Andamanese living in the Andaman Islands at the time of the arrival of the British in 1858.

Stephen Corry Stephen Corry (born 1951) is a British indigenous rights activist, better known as the CEO of Survival International. He was asked to lead the organisation in 1984. In 1993 he became the chairman of the Free Tibet Campaign and remains on its ...

, director of the British-based NGO Survival International, issued a statement saying, "With the death of Boa Sr. and the extinction of the Bo language, a unique part of human society is now just a memory. Boa's loss is a bleak reminder that we must not allow this to happen to the other tribes of the Andaman Islands." Linguist Narayan Choudhary also explained what the loss of Boa Sr. meant in both academic and personal terms, "Her loss is not just the loss of the Great Andamanese community, it is a loss of several disciplines of studies put together, including anthropology, linguistics, history, psychology, and biology. To me, Boa Sr. epitomised a totality of humanity in all its hues and with a richness that is not to be found anywhere else."

Grammar

The Great Andamanese languages are agglutinative languages, with an extensive prefix and suffix system. They have a distinctive noun class system based largely on body parts, in which every noun and adjective may take a

prefix A prefix is an affix which is placed before the Word stem, stem of a word. Adding it to the beginning of one word changes it into another word. For example, when the prefix ''un-'' is added to the word ''happy'', it creates the word ''unhappy'' ...

according to which body part it is associated with (on the basis of shape, or functional association). Thus, for instance, the *aka- at the beginning of the language names is a 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 Stick or the stick may refer to: Thin elongated objects * Twig * The weapon used in stick fighting * Walking stick, a device to facilitate balancing while walking * Shepherd's crook * Swagger stick * Digging stick * Swizzle stick, used to stir d ...

or pencil is ''aka-yop'', "pointed", from the tongue prefix. *A fallen tree is ''ar-yop'', "rotten", from the prefix for

limb Limb may refer to: Science and technology *Limb (anatomy), an appendage of a human or animal *Limb, a large or main branch of a tree *Limb, in astronomy, the curved edge of the apparent disk of a celestial body, e.g. lunar limb *Limb, in botany, ...

s 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: Body parts are inalienably possessed, requiring a possessive adjective

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): 'This' and 'that' are distinguished as ''k-'' and ''t-''. Judging from the available sources, the Andamanese languages have only two cardinal numbers —

one 1 (one, unit, unity) is a number representing a single or the only entity. 1 is also a numerical digit and represents a single unit of counting or measurement. For example, a line segment of ''unit length'' is a line segment of length 1. I ...

and two — and their entire numerical lexicon is one, two, one more, some more, and all.

References

External links

BBC Report on Aka-Bo and the Bo Language death, with recording

Aka-Bo Swadesh List by The Rosetta Project at the Internet Archive

Aka-Bo word list at the ASJP Database
{{DEFAULTSORT:Andamanese, Aka-Bo, Language Agglutinative languages Great Andamanese languages Extinct languages of Asia Languages of India Languages extinct in the 2010s 2010 disestablishments in India