The Bea language, ''Aka-Bea'', 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 Southern
[Manoharan, S. (1983). "Subgrouping Andamanese group of languages." ''International Journal of Dravidian Linguistics''
XII(1): 82-95.] group. It was spoken around the western
Andaman Strait and around the northern and western coast of
South Andaman.
History
The Bea were one of the
indigenous peoples
Indigenous peoples are culturally distinct ethnic groups whose members are directly descended from the earliest known inhabitants of a particular geographic region and, to some extent, maintain the language and culture of those original people ...
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 ...
, one of the ten or so
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 ...
tribes identified by
British colonials in the 1860s. Their language was closely related to the other
Great Andamanese languages
The Great Andamanese languages are a nearly extinct language family once spoken by the Great Andamanese peoples of the Andaman Islands in the Indian Ocean.
History
By the late 18th century, when the British first established a colonial presenc ...
. They were extinct as a distinct people by 1931.
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 or
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 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
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 ...
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'' ...
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
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
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.
Samples
The following
poem
Poetry (derived from the Greek ''poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meanings in ...
in Aka-Bea was written by a
chief
Chief may refer to:
Title or rank
Military and law enforcement
* Chief master sergeant, the ninth, and highest, enlisted rank in the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Space Force
* Chief of police, the head of a police department
* Chief of the boa ...
, ''Jambu'', after he was freed from a six-month
jail
A prison, also known as a jail, gaol (dated, standard English, Australian, and historically in Canada), penitentiary (American English and Canadian English), detention center (or detention centre outside the US), correction center, correc ...
term for
manslaughter
Manslaughter is a common law legal term for homicide considered by law as less culpable than murder. The distinction between murder and manslaughter is sometimes said to have first been made by the ancient Athenian lawmaker Draco in the 7th cen ...
.
[Man, E.H. (1923). ''Dictionary of the South Andaman Language''. British India Press: Bombay]
: ''ngô:do kûk l'àrtâ:lagî:ka,''
: ''mō:ro el:ma kâ igbâ:dàla''
: ''mō:ro el:mo lê aden:yarà''
:: ''pō:-tōt läh.''
: Chorus: ''aden:yarà pō:-tōt läh.''
Literally:
: thou heart-sad art,
: sky-surface to there looking while,
: sky-surface of ripple to looking while,
:: bamboo spear on lean-dost.
Translation:
: Thou art sad at heart,
: gazing there at the sky's surface,
: gazing at the ripple on the sky's surface,
:: leaning on the bamboo spear.
Note, however, that, as seems to be typical of Andamanese
poetry
Poetry (derived from the Greek ''poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meanings i ...
, the words and sentence structure have been somewhat abbreviated or inverted in order to obtain the desired
rhythm
Rhythm (from Greek , ''rhythmos'', "any regular recurring motion, symmetry") generally means a " movement marked by the regulated succession of strong and weak elements, or of opposite or different conditions". This general meaning of regular recu ...
ical effect.
As another example, we give part of a
creation myth
A creation myth (or cosmogonic myth) is a symbolic narrative of how the world began and how people first came to inhabit it., "Creation myths are symbolic stories describing how the universe and its inhabitants came to be. Creation myths develop ...
in Oko-Juwoi, reminiscent of
Prometheus:
See also
*
Andamanese languages
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Andamanese, Aka-Bea, Language
Agglutinative languages
Great Andamanese languages
Extinct languages of Asia
Languages of India
Languages extinct in the 1930s