Thursday, February 4, 2010

Farewell to the language of Bo

The BBC reports that the last speaker of Bo has died, taking her language to the grave with her. We can be thankful that Boa Sr was working with linguists in the last years of her life, so corpora of data on this Andaman tongue exist. In memoriam:

On the Coast of Coromandel
Where the early pumpkins blow,
In the middle of the woods
Lived the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bò.
Two old chairs, and half a candle,--
One old jug without a handle,--
These were all his worldly goods:
In the middle of the woods,
These were all the worldly goods,
Of the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bò,
Of the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bò.

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