Andamanese

Andamanese is the collective name for the indigenous languages of the Andaman Islands in the Indian Ocean, a geographic label rather than a single language family. The attested tongues fall into two unrelated groups: Great Andamanese, a cluster once spoken by about ten tribes across Great Andaman and its surrounding islands, and Ongan, comprising Jarawa and Onge in the south.

The speech of the isolated Sentinelese has never been recorded. The two groups share almost no common vocabulary, their resemblance being limited to features such as complex prefixing morphology.

Contact with outside maritime traders was sporadic and usually hostile, so the languages were almost undocumented until the British founded their first island settlement in 1789. Mainland settlers and new diseases followed, beginning the steep decline of the Great Andamanese tribes and their speech.