Boa Sr.

Boa Sr
Born	c. 1925 Andaman and Nicobar Islands, India
Died	26 January 2010 Port Blair, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, India

Boa Sr (circa 1925 – 26 January 2010) was an Indian Great Andamanese elder. She was the last person fluent in the Aka-Bo language.

Boa was born around 1925. Her mother, To, belonged to the Bo people and her father, Renge, belonged to the Jeru people. Boa's early life was spent in Mayabunder, a town on Middle Andaman Island. She was married at a young age to Nao, another member of her father's people, although both he and their children predeceased her. She regarded the Jeru language as her mother tongue.

Boa Sr. lived through the epidemic brought by the British to the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, which devastated the Great Andamanese population, and also through the Japanese occupation of the Andaman Islands during World War II. In the 1970s, she and other Great Andamanese was forcibly relocated by the government of India to Strait Island, a small tribal reserve east of Baratang Island.

Boa Sr. worked with Anvita Abbi, a professor of linguistics at Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi, since 2005. Abbi studied and recorded Boa's language and songs. Other members of the Great Andamanese speech community had difficulty understanding the songs and narratives which she knew in Bo. She also spoke the Andamanese dialect of Hindi, as well as Great Andamanese creole, a mix of the ten indigenous languages of Andamans.

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