Onge: Saving an Endangered Language

More than 415 languages are spoken in India. Among the languages are some of the most commonly spoken languages in the world: Hindi, Bengali, Punjabi and Tamil.

But on a small island in the Bay of Bengal, an endangered language is on the brink of extinction: Onge.

Onge currently is spoken only in one settlement on the northern tip of Little Andaman Island, part of the Andaman Islands union territory of India. Only about 95 speakers are left today.

It’s an endangered language now, but Onge used to be a much more popular Indian language, spoken throughout the island on and larger islands to the north. So why is Onge endangered?

What Happened to Onge?

Onge wasn’t always an endangered language. Although they traded with outsiders for centuries, the inhabitants of the Andaman Islands didn’t have much contact with outsiders or other Indian languages until British settlers landed in the 19th century.

After the British created a penal colony on the island, other settlers and laborers from the Indian mainland moved to the islands. This allowed Onge to mix with other Indian languages. Children began learning English and Hindi rather than Onge, making it an endangered language.

Island tribes, which before had remained independent, began to mix together with increased transportation options. Now, over half of the original Adamanese languages are extinct. The rest are endangered languages.

What Can Save Onge?

To keep Onge and other endangered languages alive, the President of India, Pratibha Patil, recently called for the translation of literature into a variety of Indian languages, rather than only the popular Hindi or Punjabi.

The remaining speakers of Adamanese endangered languages usually speak another Indian language as well (particularly Hindi) and sometimes combine their native language with other Indian languages.

“Honored literary works should be translated in other Indian languages so that they reach everybody,” Patil told the Press Trust of India.

Such translation measures would prevent the domination of a few popular languages, and encourage the protection of uncommon but endangered languages like Onge.

Get to Know Onge: Fast Facts

• Except for commands like “give” or “eat,” all Onge words end in vowels.

• Andamanese Indian languages use prefixes and suffixes based on the shape or function different body parts to create new words. For example, the names of many languages start with the prefix aka-, meaning tongue.

• The counting system in this Indian language only includes words for “one,” “two,” “some” and “more.”

• If you’re practicing your Onge vocabulary, here are some words to start you off: dage (coconut), inene (foreigner) and umulle (pigeon).

Where Does Onge Come From?

Onge (also spelled Önge, Eng and Ung) is part of the Andamanese family of Indian languages, the most popular of which is Great Andamanese. Onge is most closely related to Jarawa, another Indian language with approximately 200 living speakers.

Also in this Indian language family is Sentinelese, whose island-dwelling speakers discourage all contact with other cultures. Because of this aggressiveness, no one knows just what the language sounds like.

It’s unclear how Onge came about, but the Indian language has similar characteristics to other Indo-Pacific languages like West Papuan.

Whether Onge and other Andamanese languages are directly related to these languages — or whether their similarities come from their similar development from different parent languages — is a mystery still waiting to be solved.