Onge language

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title: "Onge language" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["agglutinative-languages", "critically-endangered-languages", "languages-of-india", "ongan-languages", "languages-written-in-devanagari"] description: "Ongan language of Little Andaman Island" topic_path: "linguistics" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onge_language" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary Ongan language of Little Andaman Island ::

::data[format=table title="Infobox language"]

Field	Value
name	Onge
nativename	ॳङे
pronunciation
states	India
region	South Andaman Islands, Dugong Creek and South Bay islands.
ethnicity	101 Onge people (2011 census)
speakers	94, 93% of ethnic population
date	2006
ref
speakers2	Mainly monolingual. Speakers reserved toward outsiders.
familycolor	Andamanese
fam1	Ongan
iso3	oon
notice	IPA
glotto	onge1236
glottorefname	Onge
::

| name = Onge | nativename = ॳङे | pronunciation = | states = India | region = South Andaman Islands, Dugong Creek and South Bay islands. | ethnicity = 101 Onge people (2011 census) | speakers = 94, 93% of ethnic population | date = 2006 | ref = | speakers2 = Mainly monolingual. Speakers reserved toward outsiders. | familycolor = Andamanese | fam1 = Ongan | iso3 = oon | notice = IPA | glotto = onge1236 | glottorefname = Onge

The Onge language, also rendered Önge (or Ongee, Eng, Ung), is one of two known Ongan languages, spoken on the Andaman Islands in India. It is spoken by the Onge people on Little Andaman Island.

Status

Onge used to be spoken throughout Little Andaman as well as in smaller islands to the north, and possibly in the southern tip of South Andaman Island. Since the middle of the 19th century, with British colonization and the massive inflow of Indian settlers from the mainland, the number of Onge speakers has steadily declined, although a moderate increase has been observed in recent years. Currently, there are only 94 native speakers of Onge, confined to a single settlement in the northeast of Little Andaman island (see map below). It is an endangered language. ::figure[src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d9/Distribution_of_different_Andamanese_peoples,_languages,_and_dialects_at_the_time_of_British_contact_compared_to_the_present_day.png" caption="The distributions of different Andamanese peoples, languages, and dialects at the time of British contact compared to the present-day. Onge areas are in blue; south of the islands."] ::

Phonology

Consonants

::data[format=table]

Labial	Coronal	Palatal	Velar	Glottal	Plosive	voiceless	voiced	Nasal	Approximant
				()
	()
::

• /ʔ/? (cf. Blevins (2007:161))
• Blevins (2007:160-161) states that /c, ɟ/ are actually affricates, and that retroflexes may or may not be phonemic.
• /kʷ/ delabializes to /k/ before /u, o/.
• Phonemic /d/ surfaces as [r] intervocalically, while arguably some words have phonemic /r/ which alternates with surface [r, l, j].

Vowels

::data[format=table]

Front	Central	Back	High	Mid	Low
::

There is some vowel harmony: 1p pl. prefix et- becomes [ot-] when the vowel in the next syllable is /u/, e.g. et-eɟale 'our faces' but ot-oticule 'our heads'.

Phonotactics

Words may be monosyllabic or longer, even in content words (unlike in the closely related Jarawa). Words may begin with consonants or vowels, and maximal syllables are of the form CVC. All Onge words end in vowels, except for imperatives, e.g. kaʔ 'give'.

Consonant-final stems in Jarawa often have cognates with final e in Onge, e.g. Jarawa iŋ, Onge iŋe 'water'; Jarawa inen, Onge inene 'foreigner'; Jarawa dag, Onge dage 'coconut'. Historically these vowels must have been excrescent, as nonetymological word-final e doesn't surface when number markers are suffixed, and the definite article (-gi after etymological consonants, -i after etymological vowels, due to lenition) appears as -i after etymological e but as -gi after excrescent e, e.g. daŋe → daŋe-gi 'tree; dugout'; kue → kue-i 'pig'.

NC clusters sometimes optionally reduce to single C, e.g. ~ 'to drink' (cf. Jarawa ).

Voiced obstruents may optionally nasalize in syllable onset when the coda is nasal, e.g. bone/mone 'resin, resin torch' (cf. Jarawa pone 'resin, resin torch').

Morphophonemics

Clusters across morpheme boundaries simplify to homorganic sequences, including geminates, which may occur after word final -e drops, e.g. daŋe 'tree, dugout canoe' → dandena 'two canoes'; umuge 'pigeon' → umulle 'pigeons'.

References

Bibliography

• {{Citation |last=Blevins |first=Juliette |year=2007 |title=A Long Lost Sister of Proto-Austronesian? Proto-Ongan, Mother of Jarawa and Onge of the Andaman Islands |journal=Oceanic Linguistics |volume=46 |issue=1 |pages=154–198 |doi=10.1353/ol.2007.0015|s2cid=143141296

References

1. {{Harvcoltxt. Blevins. 2007
2. {{e18. oon. Öñge
3. (August 2025). "The Colonisation of Little Andaman Island".
4. "''Önge language'' - The Ethnologue".
5. {{Harvcoltxt. Blevins. 2007
6. {{Harvcoltxt. Blevins. 2007
7. {{Harvcoltxt. Blevins. 2007
8. {{Harvcoltxt. Blevins. 2007

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