Jarawa language (Andaman Islands)

Järawa or Jarwa is one of the Ongan languages. It is spoken by the Jarawa people inhabiting the interior and south central Rutland Island, central interior, and south interior South Andaman Island, and the west coast of Middle Andaman Island.

Järawa means "foreigners" in Aka-Bea, the language of their traditional enemies. Like many peoples of the world, they call themselves "people" in their language, aong.

The Jarawa language of the Andaman Islands is considered vulnerable.

History
Jarawa is a language used mainly by hunter-gatherer communities who live along the western coast of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

Other than having a history as traditional hunter-forager-fishermen, they also had reputations as warriors and uncompromising defenders of their territory. The Jarawas managed to survive as a tribal entity despite suffering massive population loss from outside infectious diseases to which they had no immunity.

Jarawas currently have a population of 270 remaining. Their primary threat is a highway, Andaman Trunk Road, running through their territory and reserve of 1,028 square kilometers of dense evergreen forests.

The ancestors of the Jarawa are thought to have been part of the first successful human migrations out of Africa. Today, the Andaman Islands remain diverse, and several hundred thousand Indian settlers now reside on the islands.

Official status
Jarawa is an official language in India, specifically the Andaman Islands.

No dialects or varieties are known to have stemmed or derived from the Jarawa language.

Sounds and phonology
There are two varieties of Jarawa languages. One is spoken in the northern Middle Andaman and southern Middle Andaman.

Jarawa contains 41 sounds, 28 consonants and 13 vowels.

The language descends from a parent language known as Proto-Andamanese. From within this wide range, Little Andamanese also evolved. Onge, Jarawa, and presumably Sentinelese all branched off Little Andamanese, thus sharing similar characteristics in culture and language.

Vowels
The Jarawa language uses close (high), mid, and open to distinguish between the height of the vowels. For the tongue position, they characterize vowels as front, central, and back. For the position of lips, vowels are characterized as rounded or unrounded. Vowels in the language can be classified into three groups: There are also 2 mid-low vowels, [ɛ] and [ɔ], but their phonemic status is not deciphered yet. Because their occurrences are very limited, it is unclear how often they are used and their status.
 * 1) Two front vowels - [i] and [e]
 * 2) Two back vowels - [u] and [o]
 * 3) Three central vowels - [ɘ], [ə], and [a]

Length is very important in this language as they have short and long vowels.

Characteristics
Among all the 28 consonants, voiced and voiceless plosives are present along with voiceless aspirated plosives. Nasals, trills, retroflex flap, lateral and retroflex laterals all occur in this language.

There are also two approximants in the Jarawa language, these being labial and palatal, along with a few fricatives like the pharyngeal fricative and the bilabial fricative. Two labialised consonants also exist, such as the pharyngeal fricative and voiceless aspirated velar plosive.

Word-initial contrast between and  is disappearing, with  becoming  (note that in Onge  is not phonemically present).

Jarawa words are at least monosyllabic, and content words are at least bimoraic. Maximal syllables are CVC.

voices intervocalically in derived environments, syncopates when followed by another vowel across a morpheme boundary,  becomes  when the next syllable has a round vowel, and whole syllables may be deleted in fast speech.

Morphology
In terms of affixation, Jarawa has simple morphology as it takes prefixes and suffixes. The two kinds of prefixes are: Suffixes are aimed to convey plurality when attached to nouns or express mood, modality, and evidentiality when attached to verbs. When attaching to adjectives, they may denote either state or evidentiality as well.
 * One which is pronominal which attaches to verbs, adjectives, and nouns
 * One which indicates definiteness or referentiality, and attaches only to verbs.

In Jarawa, a morpheme can be a free root which exists independently such as in the case of /napo/ meaning 'fish'. It can also be a bounded root which occurs with obligatory prefixes as in /ən-oɖə/ meaning 'hair'. Verbs such as /ən-ətəhə/ meaning 'sit' can be a bound root. In both cases, either the nominal root for 'hair' or verbal root for 'sit', cannot occur independently if they refer to human beings. A bound root must be prefixed with some morpheme.

Jarawa has been discovered to have six kinds of word classes: Nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs are open classes where nouns and verbs are abundant and adjectives and adverbs are few in number. Postpositions and pronouns are closed classes with a small number of lexemes. The order of number of words in each class in increasing order are as follows: postposition, pronoun, adverb, adjective, verb, and noun.
 * Nouns
 * Verbs
 * Pronouns
 * Adjectives
 * Adverbs
 * Postposition

There are three kinds of pronouns: personal pronouns (pronominals), demonstrative pronouns, and interrogative pronouns. First person form of personal pronouns are 'mi', second person form is 'ŋi ~ ni ~ ən', and third person form is 'hi ~ əhi'.

Syntax
Jarawa uses two different types of clausal structures: verbless clauses where nominals or adjectives function as head of the predicate and verbal clauses where verbs are the head of the predicate, with core arguments. Both types of clauses have different morphological and syntactic structures.

In yes or no questions, all questions start with ka. The schema is presented as: ka + [subject] + [object] + [verb].

/Onəhə-le/ can either mean 'what is being done' or 'why', /ŋi onəhə-le/ means 'What are you doing?' and /ŋi onəhə-le ɖ-iche/ means 'Why did you do that?'

Writing system
The Jarawas have no system of writing. In observed designs, wavy lines would represent the sea and therefore only drawings or pictures would be drawn to communicate. But CIIL, Mysore introduced revised Devanagari and Latin scripts for the Jarawa Language.

Everyday usage examples
The following examples show minimal pairs, common phrases, and kinship terms.

These signify the contrast between the vowels /i/ and /u/: These signify the contrast between vowel /e/ and /o/: These signify the contrast between /o/ and /a/: These signify the contrast between vowel /a/ and /ə/:
 * /hiɽu/ = 'black'
 * /innə-gə cew/ = 'smells good'
 * /hulu/ = 'hot'
 * /unnə/ = 'return home'
 * /tape/ = 'moon'
 * /tapo/ = 'good'
 * /topo/ = 'snake'
 * /tapo/ = 'good'
 * /hʷawə/ = 'watercourse'
 * /hʷəwə/ = 'wild boar'

Common phrases

 * /mi bəɘʈʰe-jə/ : I/We are going.
 * /mi omohə/ : I/We sleep.
 * /mi ŋ-əjojəba/ : I saw you.

Kinship terms

 * Father: /ummə/
 * Mother: /kaja/
 * Husband: /a:gi/
 * Wife: /əŋa:p/
 * Elder Sister: /a:mi/
 * Elder Brother: /a:pə/
 * Son/Daughter: /ajə/
 * Younger brother/sister: /aikʰwaʈə/