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Ongan

Eurasian Language Families

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
Region
Andaman Islands 1
Speaker Count
296 1
Sum 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 Status
Partially reconstructed. Blevins (2007) reconstructs a small set of Proto-Ongan forms, including the pronoun prefixes m-, ng-, gw- and en-. 1
Sources
1. Wikipedia: Ongan Languages
Wikimedia Foundation
  • Ongan 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-.
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