Ongan, also called Angan or Jarawa-Onge, is a family of two attested languages, Onge and Jarawa, spoken in the southern Andaman Islands. Onge has about 96 mostly monolingual speakers and Jarawa about 200, both figures as of 1997; two further languages, Jangil and Sentinelese, may belong to the family but lack documented linguistic data. The languages are agglutinative, with extensive prefix and suffix systems and a noun-class system based on body parts.
Facts
Speaker CountSum of the two attested Ongan languages as of 1997: 96 Onge speakers plus an estimated 200 Jarawa speakers, both from the cited source. No more recent aggregate found. Proto-Language StatusPartially reconstructed. Blevins (2007) reconstructs a small set of Proto-Ongan forms, including the pronoun prefixes m-, ng-, gw- and en-. 2 Browse and compare
Classification Confidence Reconstructed Ancestor Compare
Number of Languages In the Other Atlases
Includes
Also in Divinity Atlas: included in this subject.
Found In
Also in Geography Atlas: where this subject is found.
Source Glottolog
Sources
1. Glottolog: Jarawa-Onge (languoid record)
GlottologLanguoid record: child_language_count
"child_language_count": 2
Languoid record: level and category
"level": "family", "bookkeeping": false, "category": "Family"
View the Source 2. Wikipedia: Ongan Languages
Wikimedia FoundationOngan languages, Wikipedia, infobox region field
Andaman Islands
Ongan languages, Wikipedia, opening section
96 speakers (Onge) in 1997, mostly monolingual
Ongan languages, Wikipedia, Grammar section
Blevins reconstructs Proto-Ongan *m-, *ŋ-, *gw-, *en-.
Infobox: protoname
Proto-Ongan
View the Source Wikidata: Ongan
Wikidata Q2090575, class allow-list match (w-wdresolver-0926)View the Source Reader Challenges (0)
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