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Aka-Kede language

Kede
Aka-Kede
Native to India
Region Andaman Islands; central and north central Middle Andaman island.
Extinct between 1931 and 1951
Great Andamanese
  • North
    • Kede
Language codes
ISO 639-3
Glottolog akak1252
Schematic Map of Andamanese Languages & Tribes.png

The Kede language, Aka-Kede, is an extinct Great Andamanese language, of the Northern group. It was spoken in the Northern section of Middle Andaman island (Justin 2000).

The Aka-Kede were one of the indigenous peoples of the Andaman Islands, one of the ten or so Great Andamanese tribes identified by British colonials in the 1860s. Their language was closely related to the other Great Andamanese languages. They disappeared as a distinct group sometime after 1931.

The Great Andamanese languages are agglutinative languages, with an extensive prefix and suffix system. They have a distinctive noun class system based largely on body parts, in which every noun and adjective may take a prefix according to which body part it is associated with (on the basis of shape, or functional association). Thus, for instance, the *aka- at the beginning of the language names is a prefix for objects related to the tongue. An adjectival example can be given by the various forms of yop, "pliable, soft", in Aka-Bea:

Similarly, beri-nga "good" yields:

The prefixes are,

Body parts are inalienably possessed, requiring a possessive adjective prefix to complete them, so one cannot say "head" alone, but only "my, or his, or your, etc. head".

The basic pronouns are almost identical throughout the Great Andamanese languages; Aka-Bea will serve as a representative example (pronouns given in their basic prefixal forms):

'This' and 'that' are distinguished as k- and t-.

Judging from the available sources, the Andamanese languages have only two cardinal numbersone and two — and their entire numerical lexicon is one, two, one more, some more, and all.


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