Sentinelese language

Quality 0.50 · 2 views · Updated 2 months ago

Language of the Sentinelese

title: "Sentinelese language" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["andamanese-languages", "unattested-languages-of-asia", "languages-of-india", "endangered-unclassified-languages"] description: "Language of the Sentinelese" topic_path: "linguistics" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentinelese_language" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary Language of the Sentinelese ::

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

Field	Value
name	Sentinelese
states	India
region	North Sentinel Island, southwest of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands
ethnicity	Sentinelese
speakers	~39–400
date	2018
ref	e25
familycolor	Andamanese
family	unclassified (Ongan?)
iso3	std
pushpin_map	Bay of Bengal
pushpin_map_caption	Location in the Bay of Bengal
pushpin_label_position	left
coordinates
glotto	sent1241
glottorefname	Sentinel
{{Tmbox	name
map	Languages and dialects of the Andaman Islands at British contact.png
mapcaption	North Sentinel Island, the small grey island to the southwest, shown in the context of the other Andamanese languages.
acceptance	unattested
::

Sentinelese is the undescribed language of the Sentinelese people of North Sentinel Island in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, India. Due to the lack of contact between the Sentinelese people and the rest of the world, essentially nothing is known of their language.

Classification

It is presumed that the islanders speak a single language and that it is a member of one of the Andamanese language families. Based on what little is known about similarities in culture and technology and their geographical proximity, it is supposed that their language is related to the Ongan languages, such as Jarawa, rather than to Great Andamanese. It has been recorded that the Jarawa and Sentinelese languages are mutually unintelligible.

Status

Sentinelese is classified as an endangered language due to a highly likely small number of speakers, matching the unknown population of the island, which has been estimated at anywhere from 100 to 250; an estimate by the Indian government is 100.

Lexicon

No words of the Sentinelese language are known with certainty. However, one personal name is tentatively attested: Dāūwacho-chégálé-bāī, recorded by Maurice Portman as belonging to a Sentinelese man who "had, some years before, left the North Sentinel in a canoe and come across, via Rutland Island, to the Cinque Islands and the Little Andaman." If the man was indeed from the island, and the attestation reflects his original Sentinelese name, it may represent an attestation of Sentinelese.

Further possible lexical information was provided in 2020 by Indian anthropologist Dr. M. Sreenathan, a member of the party who made brief contact on the island in the 1990s. He describes the Sentinelese shouting liya and luwa while gathering coconuts from the contact party, which he postulates means 'near' and 'far' respectively, on the basis of comparable words in Jarawa. Other words transcribed by Sreenathan include məəŋə məəŋɖa, əc ale, ʈ/ɖaŋ, ɖaik, kayə, tu aɖe, pila and iŋ.'

References

Abbi, A. (2013). A Grammar of the Great Andamanese Language: An Ethnolinguistic Study. Brill.

Annamalai, E., & Gnanasundaram, V. (2001). Andamanese: biological challenge for language reversal. MULTILINGUAL MATTERS, 309–322.

Asher, R. E. (2008). 1 Language in historical context. Language in South Asia, 31.

Endicott, P., Gilbert, M. T. P., Stringer, C., Lalueza-Fox, C., Willerslev, E., Hansen, A. J., & Cooper, A. (2003). The genetic origins of the Andaman Islanders. The American Journal of Human Genetics, 72(1), 178–184.

Lawson, A. (2010). Last speaker of ancient language of Bo dies in India. BBC News, 4.

Logan, W. S. (2007). Closing Pandora's box: human rights conundrums in cultural heritage protection (pp. 33–52). Springer New York.

Mahapatra, B. P. (1989). The problems in learning minority languages with special reference to tribal languages.

Manoharan, S. (1997). Pronominal prefixes and formative affixes in Andamanese language. Languages of tribal and indigenous peoples of India: The ethnic space, 457-73.

Ravi Velloor, I. C. (2005, January 7). Fears for survival of age-old Andaman tribes; Six groups, especially the Sentinelese, are threatened as they lack technology to adapt. Straits Times, The (Singapore)

Sarkar, J. K. (1989). Breakthrough in Sentinelese contact: some emerging issues. Journal Of The Indian Anthropological Society, 24(3), 294–296.

Through Lens and Text: Constructions of a 'Stone Age' Tribe in the Andaman Islands. (2009). History Workshop Journal, (67), 173.

van Driem, G. (2007). Endangered Languages of South Asia. Language Diversity Endangered, B. Matthias, ed. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 303–341.

(2005, January 6). Indian Express:; Govt will not ‘get to know' Sentinelese. Indian Express (India).

References

Van Driem, G.. (2007). "Handbook of Endangered Languages". Mouton de Gruyter.
"The most isolated tribe in the world?". Survival International.
Pandya, Vishvajit. (2008). "In the Forest: Visual and Material Worlds of Andamanese History (1858–2006)". University Press of America.
"Enumeration of Primitive Tribes in A&N Islands: A Challenge".
Moseley, Christopher. (2007). "Encyclopedia of the world's endangered languages". Routledge.
Abbi, Anvita. (2006). "Endangered Languages of the Andaman Islands". Lincom.
Brenzinger, Matthias. (2007). "Language diversity endangered". Walter de Gruyter.
Portman, M. V.. (1899). "A History Of Our Relations With The Andamanese Vol.2".
Sreenathan, M. (2020). "The Languages of Andaman and Nicobar Islands".

::callout[type=info title="Wikipedia Source"] This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page. ::