Dictionary of the Great Andamanese Language (English-Great Andamanese-Hindi)

by Anvita Abbi

On the brink of extinction, the Great Andamanese language, one of the oldest in the world, had been crying out for concerted effort for salvage and documentation. This multilingual interactive dictionary is a maiden effort to capture the last remnant data. The dictionary comes with a meticulously designed CD-ROM of the entire dictionary backed by original sound recordings of Great Andamanese speakers. 

The development of the Great Andamanese linguistic structures followed a completely different trajectory from the languages of agrarian and pastoral societies. The grammatical structures, unique in their own right, force us to rethink about the universals of language. This dictionary documents the present form of the language, a koine, drawing its resources from four great Andamanese languages, two of which, Khora and Bo have recently become extinct. This makes it an invaluable, first and last document of these extinct languages for not only the linguist and anthropologist, but also the ethno-biologist, natural scientist, botanist, zoologist, ornithologists and anyone who can make use of the scientific and Latin names for natural phenomena Painstakingly researched and included. 

Anvita Abbi is Professor of Linguistics at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. A distinguished research in languages of the Indian subcontinent, she has carried out first-hand field research on all six families of language found there. She has occupied positions of Guest Scientist at the Max Planck Institute of Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig Germany and Visiting Professorships at Universities.