Sentinelese language
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| Sentinel | ||
|---|---|---|
| Spoken in: | India | |
| Region: | North Sentinel Island | |
| Total speakers: | approx. 250 (median estimate) | |
| Language family: | Unclassified, possibly Andamanese possibly Ongan Sentinel |
|
| Language codes | ||
| ISO 639-1: | none | |
| ISO 639-2: | mis | |
| ISO 639-3: | std | |
| Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. | ||
The Sentinelese language (Sentinel in ISO 639-3) is the language of the Sentinelese of North Sentinel Island in the Andaman Islands, India. Nothing is known of the language, and no word lists or language samples have been collected by researchers. It is presumably an Andamanese language, but how closely it may be related to other languages of that family is unknown.
Since interactions with the Sentinelese have been extremely rare, brief, and generally shunned by the people themselves, there has been no material or even word lists published on their language; hence, there can be no classification. On the two documented occasions when Onge and Aka-Bea individuals were taken to North Sentinel Island in order to attempt communication, in neither case were they able to recognise any of the language spoken by the inhabitants, though the exchanges were admittedly brief and hostile. However, based on what little is known about similarities in culture and technology and their geographical proximity, it is supposed that their history and language is more closely related to the Ongan branch than that of the Great Andamanese.
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