Onge language

Since the middle of the 19th century, with British colonization and the massive inflow of Indian settlers from the mainland, the number of Onge speakers has steadily declined, although a moderate increase has been observed in recent years.

[3] Currently, there are only 94 native speakers of Onge,[4] confined to a single settlement in the northeast of Little Andaman island (see map below).

prefix et- becomes [ot-] when the vowel in the next syllable is /u/, e.g. et-eɟale 'our faces' but ot-oticule 'our heads'.

[5] Words may begin with consonants or vowels, and maximal syllables are of the form CVC.

[8] Clusters across morpheme boundaries simplify to homorganic sequences, including geminates, which may occur after word final -e drops, e.g. daŋe 'tree, dugout canoe' → dandena 'two canoes'; umuge 'pigeon' → umulle 'pigeons'.

The distributions of different Andamanese peoples, languages, and dialects at the time of British contact compared to the present-day. Onge areas are in blue; south of the islands.