see www.andaman.org:

http://www.andaman.org/book/chapter8/text8.htm
http://www.andaman.org/book/chapter32/text32.htm
http://www.andaman.org/book/chapter33/text33.htm


Am Mittwoch, 04.05.05 um 12:50 Uhr schrieb Ashish Fernandes:

> I was wondering if anyone on the list can throw some light about the
> ten
> language variants mentioned in the article.... also the Bo and Cari
> tribes,
> were these part of what we refer to as the Great Andamanese? ANd
> finally the
> Ranchi link is most intriguing, can anyone explain how that came
> about??
> ashish
>
> Ashish Fernandes
> 304, Asit Apartments,
> Kane Road, Bandra
> Bombay 400 050
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Pankaj" <pankaj@...>
> To: <andamanicobar@...>
> Sent: Wednesday, May 04, 2005 1:13 PM
> Subject: [andamanicobar] Great Andamanese Jirake is dead
>
>
>> The Indian Express
>> May 2, 2005
>> http://www.indianexpress.com/archive_frame.php
>>
>> Great Andaman King, whose tribe had miracle tsunami escape, is dead
>>
>>
>> King Jirake's death in a Chennai hospital last month is a huge loss
>> for
>> those trying to break linguistic barriers
>>
>>
>> ABANTIKA GHOSH
>>
>>
>>
>> NEW DELHI, MAY 2: Four months ago, his tribe's near-miraculous escape
> from
>> the devastating tsunami catapulted King Jirake to fame. His interviews
>> describing the disaster, and how his tribe was adjusting in their new
>> quarters in Port Blair, made headlines across the world.
>> But all that was in stark contrast to the 65-year-old's quiet and
>> painful
>> death in a Chennai Hospital on April 17-the tribal chief died of brain
>> haemorrhage and consequent paralysis.
>> And apart from the 49 remaining members of his tribe, including
>> Jirake's
>> grandson Berebe, who was born days before he died, the only other
>> people
>> mourning his demise were a group of researchers from the School of
> Languages
>> in Jawaharlal Nehru University.
>> For, Jirake was the last member of his tribe who knew all the 10
>> variants
> of
>> the Great Andamanese language. With his death, the trilingual Great
>> Andamanese-English-Hindi dictionary that Professor Anvita Abbi's team
>> from
>> JNU is working on, has suffered a setback that it will probably never
>> be
>> able to fully recover from.
>> Not more than 18 of Jirake's remaining tribesmen speak Great
>> Andamanese
> and,
>> after him, there are just five who speak it fluently.
>> Speaking to The Indian Express from Port Blair, Alok Das, a
>> sociolinguist
>> member of Professor Abbi's team, remembers the day Jirake died. ''At
> around
>> 10.30 am, when I reached the Adi Basera tribal guest house in Port
>> Blair
>> where the tribe is presently lodged, I was bemused when everybody who
>> I
> met
>> wanted to shake hands with me. In the one-and-a-half months I have
>> been
>> here, the Great Andamanese had never shaken hands with me before."
>> It was only after some time that Das realised that Jirake was gone
>> and the
>> tribe traditionally shook hands only when there was a death in the
>> community.
>> For Abbi, a professor in the department of linguistics, the greatest
>> irony
>> of Jirake's demise is the fact that days before he suffered the brain
>> stroke, Jirake was found drunk in the streets of Port Blair.
>> "Alcoholism
> is
>> something we have introduced among the tribals and that is only
>> speeding
> up
>> the process of their extinction. Even in his death bed, Jirake
>> repeatedly
>> asked for liquor," she says.
>> Describing her project as a ''race against the setting sun'' now, Abbi
> says,
>> ''Any disappearance of a unique language is a big loss because it also
> means
>> disappearance of indigenous knowledge and culture. Jirake had vast
> knowledge
>> about not just his own people but also other tribes. He was
>> multilingual,
>> his father was from the Bo tribe and his mother from the Cari tribe.
>> The
>> tribes are now extinct, but Jirake spoke both their languages apart
>> from a
>> host of others like Jeru, Khora and Pucikwar.'' The king also knew
>> Burmese
>> and a language called Sadari spoken in the tribal areas of Ranchi
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Yahoo! Groups Links
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>
>
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>
>
>