Shompen Language
Shompen is a poorly known language, or languages, spoken on Great Nicobar Island in the Indian union territory of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in the Indian Ocean south of Burma.
Partially because the native peoples of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands are protected from outside researchers, Shompen is poorly described, with much of the data from the 19th century, and the little 20th–21st century data of poor quality. However, Roger Blench and Paul Sidwell demonstrate that it is an Austroasiatic language, though they suggest that it might constitute a distinct branch of that family.
Read more about Shompen Language: Speakers, Data, Classification, Phonology
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“The etymologist finds the deadest word to have been once a brilliant picture. Language is fossil poetry. As the limestone of the continent consists of infinite masses of the shells of animalcules, so language is made up of images or tropes, which now, in their secondary use, have long ceased to remind us of their poetic origin.”
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