Three linguistic layers with nothing between them. The oldest is the Andamanese family — Great Andamanese in the north, and Ongan, comprising Jarawa and Onge, in the south — which has no established relationship to any other family in the world, including Nicobarese a hundred and fifty kilometres to the south. The Sentinelese language is undocumented and no outsider knows what it is related to. Layered over that is the mainland inheritance of the settlers: Bengali, Tamil, Telugu, Sadri, Kurukh, Malayalam, Karen. And produced on the islands themselves is Andaman Creole Hindi, an ISO-recognised language built from Hindi, Bengali and Tamil in the penal-colony period, which is what people actually speak to each other when their households do not share a mother tongue.
Andaman Creole HindiCreole, Hindi-lexified with Bengali and Tamil input
Grew out of the penal settlement after 1858, when convicts, guards and officials had no common language; reinforced after 1947 and again after 1971 by Bengali and Tamil resettlement. It has its own ISO code, hca, and is one of very few Indian languages whose formation can be dated to a specific institution.
बोलने वाले: Widely spoken across the settler population; native speakers concentrated around Port Blair
Great AndamaneseGreat Andamanese, an independent language family
Ten distinct languages were recorded in the nineteenth century — among them Bo, Jeru, Kora, Cari, Pucikwar and Bea. What survives now is a mixed variety drawing mainly on the northern languages, spoken alongside Hindi. Boa Sr, the last fluent speaker of Bo, died in 2010, and Bo went with her.
बोलने वाले: A very small number of elderly speakers
Jarawa and OngeOngan
Two related languages of the southern Andamans, both still spoken by their communities. Both are documented only to the extent that limited, permitted contact has allowed, and the Jarawa reserve is closed.
SentinelesePresumed Andamanese; unclassified
Not documented. No sustained contact exists and none is lawful. What is known is that the few recorded encounters gave no sign that the language was intelligible to Onge speakers.
Bengali, Tamil, Telugu, Sadri and KarenIndo-Aryan; Dravidian; Sino-Tibetan
The settler mother tongues. Bengali is the largest by number; Karen, spoken by a few thousand around Mayabunder, is the only Sino-Tibetan language in the territory and the only one that arrived from Burma.