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Concept
Ongan languages
Summary
Ongan, also called Angan, South Andamanese or Jarawa–Onge, is a phylum which comprises two attested Southern-Andamanese languages spoken in the southern Andaman Islands.
The two known extant languages are:
Önge or Onge ( transcribes /ə/); 96 speakers (Onge) in 1997, mostly monolingual
Jarawa or Järawa; estimated at 200 speakers (Jarawa) in 1997, monolingual
A third language, Sentinelese, the presumed language of the Sentinelese people, is commonly presumed to be an Ongan language but in fact is completely unknown by non-Sentinelese people; estimated 15–500 speakers.
A fourth language, Jangil, extinct sometime between 1895 and 1920, is reported to have been unintelligible with but to have had noticeable similarities to Jarawa.
The Andamanese languages fall into two clear families, Great Andamanese and Ongan, plus one presumed but unattested language, Sentinelese. The similarities between Great Andamanese and Ongan are mainly of a typological and morphological nature, with little demonstrated common vocabulary. Linguists, including long-range researchers such as Joseph Greenberg, have expressed doubts as to the validity of Andamanese as a family.
It has since been proposed (by Juliette Blevins 2007) that Ongan (but not Great Andamanese) is distantly related to Austronesian in a family called Austronesian–Ongan.
However, the proposal of a genealogical connection between Austronesian and Ongan has not been well-received by other linguists. George Van Driem (2011) considers Blevins' evidence as "not compelling", although he leaves the possibility open that some resemblances could be the result of contact/borrowing, a position also held by Hoogervorst (2012). Robert Blust (2014) argues that Blevins' conclusions are not supported by her data, and that of her first 25 reconstructions, none are reproducible using the comparative method. Blust concludes that the grammatical comparison does not hold up, and also cites non-linguistic (such as cultural, archaeological, and biological) evidence against Blevins' hypothesis.
Official source
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