Andaman Creole Hindi

Andaman Creole Hindi
Andaman Hindi
Native toIndia
RegionAndaman and Nicobar Islands
Native speakers
(10,000 cited 1994)
Hindi-Bengali-Tamil-based creole
  • Andaman Creole Hindi
Official status
Recognised minority
language in
Language codes
ISO 639-3hca
Glottologanda1280

Andaman Creole Hindi is a trade language of the Andaman Islands, spoken as a native language especially in Port Blair and villages to the south. Singh (1994) describes it as a creolisation of Hindi, Bengali and Tamil.

History

The use of Hindi on the islands originates with the establishment of a penal colony in Port Blair in 1868. With the arrival of British generals came Hindi-speaking Indian officials.

Later, after Indian independence, and especially after the independence of Bangladesh, Bengali refugees were motivated to move to the islands, along with other peoples speaking many other languages, notably Tamil, due to incentives given by the government.

References

  1. 1 2 Andaman Creole Hindi at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
  2. ↑ Abbi, Anvita (2021). "Social cohesion and emerging standards of Hindi in a multilingual context" (PDF). The Cambridge Handbook of language standardization: 126–127 – via ResearchGate.