Shompen languages

Infobox Language family
name=Shompen
region=Great Nicobar Island
familycolor=isolate
fam1=unknown
child1=unknownThe Shompen languages are 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, these languages are poorly described, with much of the data from the 19th century, and the little 20th-21st century data generally brief and of poor quality.

peakers

The Shompen are hunter-gatherers living in the hilly interior of the Great Nicobar Biosphere Reserve. Population estimates are approximately 400, though no census has been conducted.

Classification

Although traditionally lumped in with the Nicobarese languages, which are part of the Austro-Asiatic language family, little evidence has ever been presented to support this assumption. The only identifiable Austro-Asiatic roots are numerals, which are common borrowings, and a few body part-words, such as "koi" "head", which exists alongside native "fiāu." Instead, it appears that Shompen may be a language isolate.

Variants

It is not known if the different language variants called "Shompen" are even related to each other. Word lists collected by different researchers are often completely dissimilar. For example, the word for "back (of the body)" has been reported to be "gikau, tamnōi," and "hokōa;" "to bathe" as "pu(g)oihoɔp" and "hōhōm."

Phonology

It is not clear if the following description applies to all variants of Shompen.

There are seven vowel qualities, IPA|/i e ɛ a ɔ o u/, all of which may be nasalized. Shompen has vowel length, apparently for all vowel qualities, though it is not clear if all nasal vowels may also be long.

The consonants are approximately as follows:

:* The palatal "stops" are written and . It is not clear how these are realized phonetically.

References

*Robert Blench, "The language of the Shom Pen: a language isolate in the Nicobar islands." [http://www.rogerblench.info/Language%20data/Isolates/Shompen%20paper.pdf] Manuscript, 2007.