Sentinelese language

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 and it is likely in poor vitality.^[2]

Sentinelese
(unattested)
Native to	India
Region	North Sentinel Island, southwest of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands
Ethnicity	Sentinelese
Native speakers	~100-250 (2018)[1]
Language family	unclassified (Ongan?)
Language codes
ISO 639-3	std
Glottolog	sent1241
ELP	Sentinel
North Sentinel Island, the small grey island to the southwest, shown in the context of the other Andamanese languages.
Sentinelese Location in the Bay of Bengal
Coordinates: 11.55°N 92.25°E / 11.55; 92.25

Classification

It is presumed that the islanders speak a single language and that it is a member of one of the Andamanese language families.^[3] 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.^[1] On the documented occasions when Onge-speaking individuals were taken to North Sentinel Island in order to attempt communication, they were unable to recognise any of the languages spoken by the inhabitants.^[4] It has been recorded that the Jarawa and Sentinelese languages are mutually unintelligible.^[5]

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.^[6][7][8]

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."^[9] 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 mean '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.'^[10]