The Cari (occasionally "Kari"), Chariar or Sare language, also known as ''Aka-Cari'', 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, which was spoken by the Cari people, one of a dozen

Great Andamanese people 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 relat ...

s.George Weber (~2009),
Numbers
''. Chapter 7 o

. Accessed on 12 July 2012. In the 19th century the Cari lived on the north 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 ...

and on

Landfall Landfall is the event of a storm moving over land after being over water. More broadly, and in relation to human travel, it refers to 'the first land that is reached or seen at the end of a journey across the sea or through the air, or the fact ...

and other nearby small islands. By 1994 the population had been reduced to two women aged over 50 living with the other few surviving Great Andamanese on Strait Island. Aka-Cari became extinct with the death of Licho in April 2020.A. N. Sharma (2003),
Tribal Development in the Andaman Islands
', page 62. Sarup & Sons, New Delhi.

History

The Cari population at the time of first European contacts (in the 1790s) has been estimated at 100 individuals, out of perhaps 3500 Great Andamanese. 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 Cari were decimated during colonial and post-colonial times, by diseases, alcohol, colonial warfare and loss of territory. The population was down to 39 individuals in the 1901 census, falling to 36 in 1911, 17 in 1921, and 9 in 1931. In 1949 any remaining Cari were relocated, together 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 ...

; and then again in 1969 to a reservation on Strait Island.Rann Singh Mann (2005)
Andaman and Nicobar Tribes Restudied: Encounters and Concerns
page 149. Mittal Publications. By 1994, the tribe was reduced to only two women, aged 57 and 59, and therefore was on its way to extinction. The last speaker, a woman called Licho, died from chronic tuberculosis on 4 April 2020 in Shadipur,

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 An ...

. They are 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 lang ...

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 a ...

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, ...

and

adjective In linguistics, an adjective (abbreviated ) is a word that generally modifies a noun or noun phrase or describes its referent. Its semantic role is to change information given by the noun. Traditionally, adjectives were considered one of the ma ...

may take a prefix 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 in the mouth of a typical tetrapod. It manipulates food for mastication and swallowing as part of the digestive process, and is the primary organ of taste. The tongue's upper surface (dorsum) is covered by taste ...

. 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 throug ...

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 ...

is ''ôto-yop'', "pliable", from a prefix for long things. *A stick 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 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 ...

prefix 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. T ...

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

External links

Aka-Cari Swadesh List
{{DEFAULTSORT:Andamanese, Aka-Cari, Language Agglutinative languages Great Andamanese languages Extinct languages of Asia Languages of India Languages extinct in the 2020s

History

Grammar

See also

References

External links