The Kora (Cora) language, ''Aka-Kora'', is an extinct

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, of the Northern group. It was spoken on the northeast and north central coasts 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 ...

and on Smith Island. It has been extinct since November 2009 when its last speaker, Boro, died.

Name

The native name for the language was ''Aka-Kora'', also spelled ''Aka-Khora'' or ''Aka-Cora'' (''Aka-'' being a prefix for "tongue"); and this name is often used for the tribe itself. They were divided between shore-dwellers (''aryoto'') and forest-dwellers (''eremtaga'') subtribes.

History

By the time of the establishment of the first permanent colonial settlement at Port Blair (1858), the estimates size of the Kora tribe was about 500 individuals, out of perhaps 3500 Great Andamanese.George Weber (~2009),
Numbers
''. Chapter 7 in

''. Accessed on 2012-07-12. However the tribe was discovered only much later, in the work leading to the 1901 census. Like other

Andamanese people The Andamanese are the indigenous peoples of the Andaman Islands, part of India's Andaman and Nicobar Islands union territory in the southeastern part of the Bay of Bengal in Southeast Asia. The Andamanese peoples are among the various groups ...

s, the Kora 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 96 individuals, which decreased to 71 in 1911, 48 in 1921, and 24 in 1931. In 1949, any remaining Kora 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 relocated 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 one person claimed to be a Kora member,George Weber (~2009),

''. Chapter 8 in

''. Accessed on 2012-07-12. and 1994 the Kora tribe no longer existed as a separate unit.A. N. Sharma (2003),
Tribal Development in the Andaman Islands
', page 75. Sarup & Sons, New Delhi. Although descendants of the Kora were still living in the Great Andamanese reservation of

Strait Island Strait Island is an island 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 lies north from Port Blair. History Strait ...

as of 2006, they identified themselves as members of other tribes, mainly Jeru.

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 ...

(2006),
Great Andamanese Community
' in

'. Accessed on 2012-07-12. The last known speaker of the Kora language died in November 2009. They were a designated

Scheduled Tribe The Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Scheduled Tribes (STs) are officially designated groups of people and among the most disadvantaged socio-economic groups in India. The terms are recognized in the Constitution of India and the groups are designa ...

Grammar

The Great Andamanese languages are

agglutinative In linguistics, agglutination is a morphological process in which words are formed by stringing together morphemes, each of which corresponds to a single syntactic feature. Languages that use agglutination widely are called agglutinative langu ...

languages, with an extensive prefix and suffix system.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. They have a distinctive

noun class In linguistics, a noun class is a particular category of nouns. A noun may belong to a given class because of the characteristic features of its referent, such as gender, animacy, shape, but such designations are often clearly conventional. Some ...

system based largely on body parts, in which every

noun A noun () is a word that generally functions as the name of a specific object or set of objects, such as living creatures, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, or ideas.Example nouns for: * Living creatures (including people, alive, d ...

and

adjective In linguistics, an adjective (list of glossing abbreviations, abbreviated ) is a word that generally grammatical modifier, modifies a noun or noun phrase or describes its referent. Its semantic role is to change information given by the noun. Tra ...

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 The tongue is a muscular organ (anatomy), organ in the mouth of a typical tetrapod. It manipulates food for mastication and swallowing as part of the digestive system, digestive process, and is the primary organ of taste. The tongue's upper surfa ...

. An adjectival example can be given by the various forms of ''yop'', "pliable, soft", in Aka-Bea: *A

cushion A cushion is a soft bag of some ornamental material, usually stuffed with wool, hair, feathers, polyester staple fiber, non-woven material, cotton, or even paper torn into fragments. It may be used for sitting or kneeling upon, or to soften th ...

sponge Sponges, the members of the phylum Porifera (; meaning 'pore bearer'), are a basal animal clade as a sister of the diploblasts. They are multicellular organisms that have bodies full of pores and channels allowing water to circulate through t ...

is ''ot-yop'' "round-soft", from the prefix attached to words relating to the head or heart. *A

cane Cane or caning may refer to: *Walking stick or walking cane, a device used primarily to aid walking *Assistive cane, a walking stick used as a mobility aid for better balance *White cane, a mobility or safety device used by many people who are b ...

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 ...

pencil A pencil () is a writing or drawing implement with a solid pigment core in a protective casing that reduces the risk of core breakage, and keeps it from marking the user's hand. Pencils create marks by physical abrasion, leaving a trail ...

is ''aka-yop'', "pointed", from the tongue prefix. *A fallen

tree In botany, a tree is a perennial plant with an elongated stem, or trunk, usually supporting branches and leaves. In some usages, the definition of a tree may be narrower, including only woody plants with secondary growth, plants that are ...

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 Possessive determiners (from la, possessivus, translit=; grc, κτητικός / ktētikós - en. ktetic Lallu) are determiners which express possession. Some traditional grammars of English refer to them as possessive adjectives, though they do ...

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 number In mathematics, cardinal numbers, or cardinals for short, are a generalization of the natural numbers used to measure the cardinality (size) of sets. The cardinality of a finite set is a natural number: the number of elements in the set. Th ...

s — one and

two 2 (two) is a number, numeral and digit. It is the natural number following 1 and preceding 3. It is the smallest and only even prime number. Because it forms the basis of a duality, it has religious and spiritual significance in many cultur ...

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

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Andamanese, Aka-Kora, Language 2009 disestablishments Agglutinative languages Great Andamanese languages Extinct languages of Asia Languages of India Languages extinct in the 2000s