Ancient tribal language becomes extinct as last speaker dies

Guardian.co.uk ^ | 4 Feb 2010 | Jonathan Watts

[cold start]

Death of Boa Sr, last person fluent in the Bo language of the Andaman Islands, breaks link with 65,000-year-old culture

The last speaker of an ancient tribal language has died in the Andaman Islands, breaking a 65,000-year link to one of the world's oldest cultures.

Boa Sr, who lived through the 2004 tsunami, the Japanese occupation and diseases brought by British settlers, was the last native of the island chain who was fluent in Bo.

Taking its name from a now-extinct tribe, Bo is one of the 10 Great Andamanese languages, which are thought to date back to pre-Neolithic human settlement of south-east Asia.

Though the language has been closely studied by researchers of linguistic history, Boa Sr spent the last few years of her life unable to converse with anyone in her mother tongue.

Even members of inter-related tribes were unable to comprehend the repertoire of Bo songs and stories uttered by the woman in her 80s, who also spoke Hindi and another local language.

"Her loss is not just the loss of the Great Andamanese community, it is a loss of several disciplines of studies put together, including anthropology, linguistics, history, psychology, and biology," Narayan Choudhary, a linguist of Jawaharlal Nehru University who was part of an Andaman research team, wrote on his webpage. "To me, Boa Sr epitomised a totality of humanity in all its hues and with a richness that is not to be found anywhere else."

The Andaman Islands, in the Bay of Bengal, are governed by India. The indigenous population has steadily collapsed since the island chain was colonised by British settlers in 1858 and used for most of the following 100 years as a colonial penal colony.

[FroggyTheGremlim]

Bo! How does it go ..

“Bee bye bo-perly

Banana, fana bo-panna ...”

[Doulos1]

Thank you for your honesty. I love it when we can tell the truth about a person or a group and it pisses others off.
Think about, when we say a fact or truth and that is considered hurtful or biased, oh my. Keep on dude.

[qwertypie]

This is like lamenting the passing of an old computer language.

[qwertypie]

Congratulations - that was the shortest, most contemptuous, biased, dismissive and ignorant reference to a tribal population I've ever read.

Don't get your loincloth in a wad, dude.

[Oratam]

That event proved an unlikely Rorschach test. Libs, being libs, interpreted the Andaman Islander's attack on the government helicopter as "Hey! Don't forget us."

Most, if not all, on Freerepublic correctly interpreted the message as "Stay the 'f' away!"

[Lockbar]

In honor of things Bo:

[vladimir998]

Whoa! Ease up FRiend! Many FReepers know that the locals shot at a helicopter with bows and arrows a year or two ago. This is common knowledge for the well-informed.

[dangus]

Old computer languages never die; they just Eastern European programmers.

[isom35]

if only Boa Sr had gone to the local Best Buy and bought a tape recorder...

[I Buried My Guns]

Andaman and Nicobar are the islands where the native tribals shoot arrows at Indian Navy helicopters which bring in food and water for them.

Congratulations - that was the shortest, most contemptuous, biased, dismissive and ignorant reference to a tribal population I've ever read.

Actually, I heard that they were drunk on firewater at the time too, and had bones in their noses.

[fieldmarshaldj]

RIP.

[WOBBLY BOB]

Bo knows football.

[Deb]

Exactly. Then we’d always know the Bo word for “head lice”. And instead of standing around shooting arrows at planes, maybe the menfolk should have spent some time coming up with the wheel.

[caddie]

LOL!

[SunkenCiv]

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	Gods Graves Glyphs	Thanks! I missed your ping yesterday, along with at least one other one, so I'm just adding this topic to the catalog, not sending a general distribution. Thanks again. Ancient dialect extinct after last speaker dies Last member of 65,000-year-old tribe dies, taking one of world's earliest languages to the grave To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list. GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother, and Ernest_at_the_Beach
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