ANCIENT TRIBAL LANGUAGE BECOMES EXTINCT AS LAST SPEAKER DIES
and/or www.mantra.com/jai
Death of Boa Sr, last person fluent in the Bo language of the Andaman
Islands, breaks link with 65,000-year-old culture
By Jonathan Watts
The Guardian, UK
Thursday, February 4, 2010
Boa Sr, the last speaker of the Bo language of the Andaman Islands,
has died. Photograph: Alok Das/Survival/Survival
The last speaker of an ancient tribal language has died in the
Andaman Islands, breaking a 65,000-year link to one of the world's
oldest cultures.
Boa Sr, who lived through the 2004 tsunami, the Japanese occupation
and diseases brought by British settlers, was the last native of the
island chain who was fluent in Bo.
Taking its name from a now-extinct tribe, Bo is one of the 10 Great
Andamanese languages, which are thought to date back to pre-Neolithic
human settlement of south-east Asia.
Though the language has been closely studied by researchers of
linguistic history, Boa Sr spent the last few years of her life
unable to converse with anyone in her mother tongue.
Even members of inter-related tribes were unable to comprehend the
repertoire of Bo songs and stories uttered by the woman in her 80s,
who also spoke Hindi and another local language.
"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," Narayan
Choudhary, a linguist of Jawaharlal Nehru University who was part of
an Andaman research team, wrote on his webpage. "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."
The Andaman Islands, in the Bay of Bengal, are governed by India. The
indigenous population has steadily collapsed since the island chain
was colonised by British settlers in 1858 and used for most of the
following 100 years as a colonial penal colony.
Tribes on some islands retained their distinct culture by dwelling
deep in the forests and rebuffing would-be colonisers, missionaries
and documentary makers with volleys of arrows. But the last vestiges
of remoteness ended with the construction of trunk roads from the
1970s.
According to the NGO Survival International, the number of Great
Andamanese has declined in the past 150 years from about 5,000 to 52.
Alcoholism is rife among the survivors.
"The Great Andamanese were first massacred, then all but wiped out by
paternalistic policies which left them ravaged by epidemics of
disease, and robbed of their land and independence," said Survival
International's director, Stephen Corry. "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."
Boa Sr appears to have been in good health until recently. During the
Indian Ocean tsunami, she reportedly climbed a tree to escape the
waves.
She told linguists afterwards that she had been forewarned. "We were
all there when the earthquake came. The eldest told us the Earth
would part, don't run away or move."
More at:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/feb/04/ancient-language-extinct-speaker-dies
Jai Maharaj, Jyotishi
Om Shanti
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Panu
Jai Maharaj) wrote:
> Ancient tribal language becomes extinct as last speaker dies
How exactly is this Christians' fault?
Svenne
www.mantra.com/jai (Dr. Jai Maharaj) wrote:
>Ancient tribal language becomes extinct as last speaker dies
I reckon she couldn't speak the language at all, she was making it up
as she went along and there was nobody to call her bluff.
Svenne
harmony
"Svenne" <tvaer...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:62fom5lauv2glo5kf...@4ax.com...
what good are these so-called linguists? can't they make sense out of her
language? we know, linguists are scoundrels like the financial experts on tv
who can explain things only after all is already known.
DKleinecke
> "Svenne" <tvaerska...@aol.com> wrote in message
The language of the Andaman Islands are reasonably well-known to
linguists ( apart from what is spoken on the island that refuses to
make contact with the rest of the world). Go look in Wikipedia.
There are two language groups which may not be related ( according to
the requirements of linguistics - meaning back to no longer ago than
10,000 BCE.). There have been the obvious set of suggestions about
broader relationships but none have gathered much support.
The languages are typologically unsurprising. They would fit right at
home in South America.
and/or www.mantra.com/jai
"harmony" <a...@hotmail.com> posted:
> > Dr. Jai Maharaj posted:
> >
> > > Ancient tribal language becomes extinct as last speaker dies
> > I reckon she couldn't speak the language at all, she was making it up
> > as she went along and there was nobody to call her bluff.
> >
> > Svenne
> what good are these so-called linguists? can't they make sense out of her
> language? we know, linguists are scoundrels like the financial experts on tv
> who can explain things only after all is already known.
Maybe the linguists couldn't get money grants from Christian missionaries to
convert people by force.
harmony
<use...@mantra.com and/or www.mantra.com/jai (Dr. Jai Maharaj)> wrote in
message news:20100209GRovkcT6H0x1l81x3R0hofF@U292n...
the slow economy has caused to dry up kirastani contributions to
missionaries.
seems like there is always a positive side to even a very bad looking thing.