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Middle Andaman Island

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108-667: Middle Andaman Island is an island of the Andaman Islands . It belongs to the North and Middle Andaman administrative district , part of the Indian union territory of Andaman and Nicobar Islands . The island belongs to the Great Andaman Chain and is located 73 km (45 mi) north from Port Blair . It is the central island of the Great Andaman archipelago of India, with

216-492: A phonemic split of their tone categories. Syllables with voiced initials tended to be pronounced with a lower pitch, and by the late Tang dynasty , each of the tones had split into two registers conditioned by the initials, known as the "upper" and "lower". When voicing was lost in most varieties (except in the Wu and Old Xiang groups and some Gan dialects), this distinction became phonemic, yielding up to eight tonal categories, with

324-542: A Late Middle Chinese koiné and cannot very easily be used to determine the pronunciation of Early Middle Chinese. During the Early Middle Chinese period, large amounts of Chinese vocabulary were systematically borrowed by Vietnamese, Korean and Japanese (collectively the Sino-Xenic pronunciations ), but many distinctions were inevitably lost in mapping Chinese phonology onto foreign phonological systems. For example,

432-523: A RAP. In these cases, the permits must be pre-approved prior to arrival in Port Blair. On 26 December 2004, the coast of the Andaman Islands was devastated by a 10-metre-high (33 ft) tsunami following the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake , which is the longest recorded earthquake, lasting for between 500 and 600 seconds. Strong oral traditions in the area warned of the importance of moving inland after

540-433: A Restricted Area Permit (RAP), foreign visitors must still show their passport at Immigration at Port Blair Airport and Seaport for verification. Citizens of Afghanistan, China and Pakistan, or other foreign nationals whose origin is any of these countries, are still required to obtain a RAP to visit Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Similarly, citizens of Myanmar who wish to visit Mayabunder or Diglipur must also apply for

648-504: A better understanding and analysis of Classical Chinese poetry , such as the study of Tang poetry . The reconstruction of Middle Chinese phonology is largely dependent upon detailed descriptions in a few original sources. The most important of these is the Qieyun rime dictionary (601) and its revisions. The Qieyun is often used together with interpretations in Song dynasty rime tables such as

756-482: A close analysis of regularities in the system and co-occurrence relationships between the initials and finals indicated by the fanqie characters. However, the analysis inevitably shows some influence from LMC, which needs to be taken into account when interpreting difficult aspects of the system. The Yunjing is organized into 43 tables, each covering several Qieyun rhyme classes, and classified as: Each table has 23 columns, one for each initial consonant. Although

864-516: A compact presentation. Each square in a table contains a character corresponding to a particular homophone class in the Qieyun , if any such character exists. From this arrangement, each homophone class can be placed in the above categories. The rime dictionaries and rime tables identify categories of phonetic distinctions but do not indicate the actual pronunciations of these categories. The varied pronunciations of words in modern varieties of Chinese can help, but most modern varieties descend from

972-499: A compromise between northern and southern reading and poetic traditions from the late Northern and Southern dynasties period. This composite system contains important information for the reconstruction of the preceding system of Old Chinese phonology (early 1st millennium BC). The fanqie method used to indicate pronunciation in these dictionaries, though an improvement on earlier methods, proved awkward in practice. The mid-12th-century Yunjing and other rime tables incorporate

1080-556: A detrimental "craze". Older versions of the rime dictionaries and rime tables came to light over the first half of the 20th century, and were used by such linguists as Wang Li , Dong Tonghe and Li Rong in their own reconstructions. Edwin Pulleyblank argued that the systems of the Qieyun and the rime tables should be reconstructed as two separate (but related) systems, which he called Early and Late Middle Chinese, respectively. He further argued that his Late Middle Chinese reflected

1188-795: A few smaller Burmese islands are closer, including the three Coco Islands. The Ten Degree Channel separates the Andamans from the Nicobar Islands to the south. The highest point is located in North Andaman Island ( Saddle Peak at 732 m (2,402 ft)). The geology of the Andaman islands consists essentially of Late Jurassic to Early Eocene ophiolites and sedimentary rocks ( argillaceous and algal limestones ), deformed by numerous deep faults and thrusts with ultramafic igneous intrusions . There are at least 11 mud volcanoes on

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1296-422: A hierarchy of tone, rhyme and homophony. Characters with identical pronunciations are grouped into homophone classes, whose pronunciation is described using two fanqie characters, the first of which has the initial sound of the characters in the homophone class and second of which has the same sound as the rest of the syllable (the final). The use of fanqie was an important innovation of the Qieyun and allowed

1404-428: A large number of consonants and vowels, many of them very unevenly distributed. Accepting Karlgren's reconstruction as a description of medieval speech, Chao Yuen Ren and Samuel E. Martin analysed its contrasts to extract a phonemic description. Hugh M. Stimson used a simplified version of Martin's system as an approximate indication of the pronunciation of Tang poetry. Karlgren himself viewed phonemic analysis as

1512-474: A more sophisticated and convenient analysis of the Qieyun phonology. The rime tables attest to a number of sound changes that had occurred over the centuries following the publication of the Qieyun . Linguists sometimes refer to the system of the Qieyun as Early Middle Chinese and the variant revealed by the rime tables as Late Middle Chinese . The dictionaries and tables describe pronunciations in relative terms, but do not give their actual sounds. Karlgren

1620-494: A number of animals, many of them endemic. Andaman & Nicobar islands are home to 10% of all Indian fauna species. The islands are only 0.25% of the country's geographical area, but has 11,009 species, according to a publication by the Zoological Survey of India . The island's endemic mammals include The banded pig ( Sus scrofa vittatus ), also known as the Andaman wild boar and once thought to be an endemic subspecies,

1728-453: A prelude to his reconstruction of Old Chinese , produced a revision of Karlgren's notation , adding new notations for the few categories not distinguished by Karlgren, without assigning them pronunciations. This notation is still widely used, but its symbols, based on Johan August Lundell 's Swedish Dialect Alphabet , differ from the familiar International Phonetic Alphabet . To remedy this, William H. Baxter produced his own notation for

1836-436: A process now known as tonogenesis . Haudricourt further proposed that tone in the other languages, including Middle Chinese, had a similar origin. Other scholars have since uncovered transcriptional and other evidence for these consonants in early forms of Chinese, and many linguists now believe that Old Chinese was atonal. Around the end of the first millennium AD, Middle Chinese and the southeast Asian languages experienced

1944-437: A quake and is credited with saving many lives. In the aftermath, more than 2,000 people were confirmed dead and more than 4,000 children were orphaned or had lost one parent. At least 40,000 residents were rendered homeless and were moved to relief camps. On 11 August 2009, a magnitude 7 earthquake struck near the Andaman Islands, causing a tsunami warning to go into effect. On 30 March 2010, a magnitude 6.9 earthquake struck near

2052-475: A six-way contrast in unchecked syllables and a two-way contrast in checked syllables. Cantonese maintains these tones and has developed an additional distinction in checked syllables, resulting in a total of nine tonal categories. However, most varieties have fewer tonal distinctions. For example, in Mandarin dialects the lower rising category merged with the departing category to form the modern falling tone, leaving

2160-416: A slightly different set of initials from the traditional set. Moreover, most scholars believe that some distinctions among the 36 initials were no longer current at the time of the rime tables, but were retained under the influence of the earlier dictionaries. Early Middle Chinese (EMC) had three types of stops: voiced, voiceless, and voiceless aspirated. There were five series of coronal obstruents , with

2268-414: A three-way distinction between dental (or alveolar ), retroflex and palatal among fricatives and affricates , and a two-way dental/retroflex distinction among stop consonants . The following table shows the initials of Early Middle Chinese, with their traditional names and approximate values: Old Chinese had a simpler system with no palatal or retroflex consonants; the more complex system of EMC

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2376-455: A timber company and released when the company went bankrupt. This population has been subject to research studies. Endemic or near endemic birds include The islands' many caves , such as those at Chalis Ek are nesting grounds for the edible-nest swiftlet , whose nests are prized in China for bird's nest soup . The islands also have a number of endemic reptiles , toads and frogs , such as

2484-436: A total area of 1,536 km. Middle Andaman is separated from North Andaman Island by Austen Strait , and from Baratang Island at the south by Homfray's Strait , both shallow and narrow channels, a few hundred metres wide; and from Interview Island at its west by the navigable Interview Passage . The island's coastline was inundated by the tsunami resulting from the 26 December 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake , though

2592-426: A vowel, an optional final consonant and a tone. Their reconstruction is much more difficult than the initials due to the combination of multiple phonemes into a single class. The generally accepted final consonants are semivowels /j/ and /w/ , nasals /m/ , /n/ and /ŋ/ , and stops /p/ , /t/ and /k/ . Some authors also propose codas /wŋ/ and /wk/ , based on the separate treatment of certain rhyme classes in

2700-440: Is best to avoid swimming near mangrove areas or the mouths of creeks; swimming in the open ocean should be safe, but it is best to have a spotter around. As of 2011 , the population of the Andaman was 343,125, having grown from 50,000 in 1960. The bulk of the population originates from immigrants who came to the island since the colonial times, mainly of Bengali , Hindustani , Telugu , Tamil backgrounds. A small minority of

2808-403: Is further classified as follows: Each table also has 16 rows, with a group of 4 rows for each of the four tones of the traditional system in which finals ending in /p/ , /t/ or /k/ are considered to be checked tone variants of finals ending in /m/ , /n/ or /ŋ/ rather than separate finals in their own right. The significance of the 4 rows within each tone is difficult to interpret, and

2916-405: Is irregular, usually dry during the north-east monsoons, and very wet during the south-west monsoons. The Middle Andamans harbour mostly moist deciduous forests . North Andamans is characterised by the wet evergreen type, with plenty of woody climbers. The natural vegetation of the Andamans is tropical forest, with mangroves on the coast. The rainforests are similar in composition to those of

3024-542: Is protected by the Wildlife Protection Act 1972 (Sch I). The spotted deer ( Axis axis ), the Indian muntjac ( Muntiacus muntjak ) and the sambar ( Rusa unicolor ) were all introduced to the Andaman islands, though the sambar did not survive. Interview Island (the largest wildlife sanctuary in the territory) in Middle Andaman holds a population of feral elephants , which were brought in for forest work by

3132-420: Is strongly debated. These rows are usually denoted I, II, III and IV, and are thought to relate to differences in palatalization or retroflexion of the syllable's initial or medial, or differences in the quality of similar main vowels (e.g. /ɑ/ , /a/ , /ɛ/ ). Other scholars do not view them not as phonetic categories, but instead as formal devices exploiting distributional patterns in the Qieyun to achieve

3240-525: Is sturdier than teak and is widely used for furniture making. There are burr wood and buttress root formations in Andaman Padauk. The largest piece of buttress known from Andaman was a dining table of 13 ft × 7 ft (4.0 m × 2.1 m). The largest piece of burr wood was made into a dining table for eight. The Rudraksha ( Elaeocarps sphaericus ) and aromatic Dhoop-resin trees also are found here. The Andaman Islands are home to

3348-441: Is thought to have arisen from a combination of Old Chinese obstruents with a following /r/ and/or /j/ . Bernhard Karlgren developed the first modern reconstruction of Middle Chinese . The main differences between Karlgren and newer reconstructions of the initials are: Other sources from around the same time as the Qieyun reveal a slightly different system, which is believed to reflect southern pronunciation. In this system,

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3456-587: The Yunjing , Qiyin lüe , and the later Qieyun zhizhangtu and Sisheng dengzi . The documentary sources are supplemented by comparison with modern Chinese varieties , pronunciation of Chinese words borrowed by other languages—particularly Japanese , Korean and Vietnamese — transcription into Chinese characters of foreign names, transcription of Chinese names in alphabetic scripts such as Brahmi , Tibetan and Uyghur, and evidence regarding rhyme and tone patterns from classical Chinese poetry . Chinese scholars of

3564-566: The 2011 census of India , the Island has x households. The effective literacy rate (i.e. the literacy rate of population excluding children aged 6 and below) is 76%. The island hosts immaculate waterfalls, and pretty beaches. Adventurous fun such as Island camping, trekking, Scuba diving, snorkeling, and other exciting water sports offer you chance to indulge in real pleasure. Andaman Islands The Andaman Islands ( / ˈ æ n d ə m ə n / ) are an archipelago , made up of 200 islands, in

3672-503: The Andaman cobra ( Naja sagittifera ), South Andaman krait ( Bungarus andamanensis ) and Andaman water monitor ( Varanus salvator andamanensis ). There is a sanctuary 72 km (45 mi) from Havelock Island for saltwater crocodiles . Over the past 25 years there have been 24 crocodile attacks with four fatalities, including the death of American tourist Lauren Failla. The government has been criticised for failing to inform tourists of

3780-489: The Andamanese languages , but they make up at least two independent families, and the dozen or so attested languages are either extinct or endangered. Most of the tribal people in Andaman and Nicobar Islands believe in a religion that can be described as a form of monotheistic animism . The tribal people of these islands believe that Puluga is the only deity and is responsible for everything happening on Earth. The faith of

3888-579: The Briton in 1844 during the same storm, while transporting goods and passengers between India and Australia, and the continuous attacks launched by the natives, which the survivors fought off, alarmed the British government . In 1855, the government proposed another settlement on the islands, including a convict establishment , but the Indian Rebellion of 1857 forced a delay in its construction. However, because

3996-702: The Coco Islands and Preparis Island are part of the Yangon Region of Myanmar . The Andaman Islands are home to the Andamanese , a group of indigenous people made up of a number of tribes, including the Jarawa and Sentinelese . While some of the islands can be visited with permits, entry to others, including North Sentinel Island , is banned by law. The Sentinelese are generally hostile to visitors and have had little contact with any other people. The Indian government and coast guard protect their right to privacy. In

4104-455: The Northern and Southern dynasties period were concerned with the correct recitation of the classics. Various schools produced dictionaries to codify reading pronunciations and the associated rhyme conventions of regulated verse. The Qieyun (601) was an attempt to merge the distinctions in six earlier dictionaries, which were eclipsed by its success and are no longer extant. It was accepted as

4212-484: The Qieyun and rime table categories for use in his reconstruction of Old Chinese. All reconstructions of Middle Chinese since Karlgren have followed his approach of beginning with the categories extracted from the rime dictionaries and tables, and using dialect and Sino-Xenic data (and in some cases transcription data) in a subsidiary role to fill in sound values for these categories. Jerry Norman and W. South Coblin have criticized this approach, arguing that viewing

4320-473: The Qieyun are assumed to have the same nuclear vowel and coda, but often have different medials. Middle Chinese reconstructions by different modern linguists vary. These differences are minor and fairly uncontroversial in terms of consonants; however, there is a more significant difference as to the vowels. The most widely used transcriptions are Li Fang-Kuei's modification of Karlgren's reconstruction and William Baxter's typeable notation . The preface of

4428-431: The Qieyun system is no longer viewed as describing a single form of speech, linguists argue that this enhances its value in reconstructing earlier forms of Chinese, just as a cross-dialectal description of English pronunciations contains more information about earlier forms of English than any single modern form. The emphasis has shifted from precise phones to the structure of the phonological system. Li Fang-Kuei , as

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4536-543: The Qieyun system to cross-dialectal descriptions of English pronunciations, such as John C. Wells 's lexical sets , or the notation used in some dictionaries. For example, the words "trap", "bath", "palm", "lot", "cloth" and "thought" contain four different vowels in Received Pronunciation and three in General American ; these pronunciations and others can be specified in terms of these six cases. Although

4644-577: The Qieyun were known, and scholars relied on the Guangyun (1008), a much expanded edition from the Song dynasty. However, significant sections of a version of the Qieyun itself were subsequently discovered in the caves of Dunhuang , and a complete copy of Wang Renxu's 706 edition from the Palace Library was found in 1947. The rhyme dictionaries organize Chinese characters by their pronunciation, according to

4752-529: The Qieyun system (QYS) is the historical variety of Chinese recorded in the Qieyun , a rime dictionary first published in 601 and followed by several revised and expanded editions. The Swedish linguist Bernhard Karlgren believed that the dictionary recorded a speech standard of the capital Chang'an of the Sui and Tang dynasties . However, based on the preface of the Qieyun , most scholars now believe that it records

4860-460: The Yunjing distinguishes 36 initials, they are placed in 23 columns by combining palatals, retroflexes, and dentals under the same column. This does not lead to cases where two homophone classes are conflated, as the grades (rows) are arranged so that all would-be minimal pairs distinguished only by the retroflex vs. palatal vs. alveolar character of the initial end up in different rows. Each initial

4968-562: The Yunjing identifies a traditional set of 36 initials , each named with an exemplary character. An earlier version comprising 30 initials is known from fragments among the Dunhuang manuscripts . In contrast, identifying the initials of the Qieyun required a painstaking analysis of fanqie relationships across the whole dictionary, a task first undertaken by the Cantonese scholar Chen Li in 1842 and refined by others since. This analysis revealed

5076-412: The fanqie spelling 德紅 , the pronunciation of 德 was given as 多特 , and the pronunciation of 多 was given as 德河 , from which we can conclude that the words 東 , 德 and 多 all had the same initial sound. The Qieyun classified homonyms under 193 rhyme classes, each of which is placed within one of the four tones. A single rhyme class may contain multiple finals, generally differing only in

5184-403: The "even" or "level", "rising" and "departing" tones, occur in open syllables and syllables ending with nasal consonants . The remaining syllables, ending in stop consonants , were described as the " entering " tone counterparts of syllables ending with the corresponding nasals. The Qieyun and its successors were organized around these categories, with two volumes for the even tone, which had

5292-573: The 13th century, the name of Andaman appears in Late Middle Chinese as ʔˠan dɑ mˠan ( 晏陀蠻 , pronounced yàntuómán in modern Mandarin Chinese ) in the book Zhu Fan Zhi by Zhao Rukuo . In Chapter 38 of the book, Countries in the Sea , Zhao Rukuo specifies that going from Lambri ( Sumatra ) to Ceylan, an unfavourable wind makes ships drift towards the Andaman Islands. In the 15th century, Andaman

5400-593: The Andaman Islands. The Andaman Archipelago is an oceanic continuation of the Burmese Arakan Yoma range in the north and of the Indonesian Archipelago in the south. It has 325 islands which cover an area of 6,408 km (2,474 sq mi), with the Andaman Sea to the east between the islands and the coast of Burma. North Andaman Island is 285 kilometres (177 mi) south of Burma, although

5508-558: The Andaman and Nicobar Islands as a strategic naval base to launch an expedition against the Sriwijaya Empire . The Cholas called the island Ma-Nakkavaram ("great open/naked land"), found in the Thanjavur inscription of 1050 CE . European traveller Marco Polo (12th–13th century) also referred to this island as 'Necuverann' and a corrupted form of the Tamil name Nakkavaram would have led to

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5616-464: The Andaman archipelago, naming it Acetabularia jalakanyakae . "Jalakanyaka" is a Sanskrit word that means "mermaid". Andaman forests contain 200 or more timber producing species of trees, out of which about 30 varieties are considered to be commercial. Major commercial timber species are Gurjan ( Dipterocarpus spp.) and Padauk ( Pterocarpus dalbergioides ). The following ornamental woods are noted for their pronounced grain formation: Padauk wood

5724-402: The Andaman people have mostly avoided contact with the outside world. Their languages are a great reflection of this, with distinct linguistics that have strong morphological features – root words, prefix, suffixes – with very little relation to surrounding geographic regions. Figures from the end of the 20th century estimate there remain only approximately 400–450 ethnic Andamanese still on

5832-579: The Andamanese teaches that Paluga resides on the Andaman and Nicobar Islands' Saddle Peak . People try to avoid any action that might displease Paluga. People belonging to this religion believe in the presence of souls, ghosts, and spirits. They put a lot of emphasis on dreams. They let dreams decide different courses of action in their lives. Andamanese mythology held that human males emerged from split bamboo, whereas women were fashioned from clay. One version found by Alfred Reginald Radcliffe-Brown held that

5940-555: The Andamans, including a trip to the Nicobar Islands in 1999. In November 2018, John Allen Chau , an American missionary , traveled illegally with the help of local fishermen to the North Sentinel Island off the Andaman Islands chain group on several occasions, despite a travel ban to the island. He is reported to have been killed. Despite some relaxation introduced earlier in 2018 to the stringent visit permit system for

6048-585: The British about the tribe's plans. In 1867, the merchantman Nineveh was wrecked on the reef of North Sentinel Island. The 86 survivors reached the beach in the ship's boats. On the third day, they were attacked with iron-tipped spears by naked islanders. One person from the ship escaped in a boat and the others were later rescued by a British Royal Navy ship. For some time, sickness and mortality were high, but swamp reclamation and extensive forest clearance continued. The Andaman colony became notorious with

6156-489: The British. Today, a memorial stands in Andaman water sports complex as a tribute to the people who died in the battle. Fearful of British intentions and with help from an escaped convict from Cellular Jail , the Great Andamanese attacked the British settlement, but they were outnumbered and soon suffered heavy casualties. Later, it was identified that an escaped convict named Dudhnath Tewari had changed sides and informed

6264-405: The Cantonese scholar Chen Li in a careful analysis published in his Qieyun kao (1842). Chen's method was to equate two fanqie initials (or finals) whenever one was used in the fanqie spelling of the pronunciation of the other, and to follow chains of such equivalences to identify groups of spellers for each initial or final. For example, the pronunciation of the character 東 was given using

6372-466: The Indian mainland. There are protected areas on Little Andaman , Narcondam , North Andaman and South Andaman, but these are mainly aimed at preserving the coast and the marine wildlife rather than the rainforests. Threats to wildlife come from introduced species including rats, dogs, cats and the elephants of Interview Island and North Andaman. Scientists discovered a new species of green algae species in

6480-595: The authority of the Arzi Hukumat-e-Azad Hind (Provisional Government of Free India) headed by Subhas Chandra Bose , who visited the islands during the war, and renamed them as Shaheed (Martyr) & Swaraj (Self-rule). On 30 December 1943, during the Japanese occupation, Bose, who was allied with the Japanese, first raised the flag of Indian independence. General Loganathan , of the Indian National Army ,

6588-513: The crocodile sanctuary and danger, while simultaneously promoting tourism. Crocodiles are not only found within the sanctuary, but throughout the island chain in varying densities. They are habitat restricted, so the population is stable but not large. Populations occur throughout available mangrove habitat on all major islands, including a few creeks on Havelock. The species uses the ocean as a means of travel between different rivers and estuaries, thus they are not as commonly observed in open ocean. It

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6696-439: The dialect data through the rime dictionaries and rime tables distorts the evidence. They argue for a full application of the comparative method to the modern varieties, supplemented by systematic use of transcription data. The traditional analysis of the Chinese syllable , derived from the fanqie method, is into an initial consonant, or "initial", ( shēngmǔ 聲母 ) and a final ( yùnmǔ 韻母 ). Modern linguists subdivide

6804-423: The dictionaries. Finals with vocalic and nasal codas may have one of three tones , named level, rising and departing. Finals with stop codas are distributed in the same way as corresponding nasal finals, and are described as their entering tone counterparts. There is much less agreement regarding the medials and vowels. It is generally agreed that "closed" finals had a rounded glide /w/ or vowel /u/ , and that

6912-535: The different languages. In 1954, André-Georges Haudricourt showed that Vietnamese counterparts of the rising and departing tones corresponded to final /ʔ/ and /s/ , respectively, in other (atonal) Austroasiatic languages . He thus argued that the Austroasiatic proto-language had been atonal, and that the development of tones in Vietnamese had been conditioned by these consonants, which had subsequently disappeared,

7020-470: The earlier palatal consonants. The remainder of a syllable after the initial consonant is the final, represented in the Qieyun by several equivalent second fanqie spellers. Each final is contained within a single rhyme class, but a rhyme class may contain between one and four finals. Finals are usually analysed as consisting of an optional medial, either a semivowel , reduced vowel or some combination of these,

7128-582: The effect was far less severe when compared with other Islands of Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Politically, Middle Andaman Island, is part of Mayabunder and Rangat Tehsils . Population of Middle Andaman consists of Bengali, Tamil and Keralite settlers. The island is also home to many of the indigenous Jarawa people. The main occupation of the inhabitants is farming and Agriculture. Middle Andaman's main towns (Metro population in brackets) are Rangat (10,000), Mayabunder (5,565), Bakultala (4,454), Nimbutala (3,063), and Kadamtala (3,008). According to

7236-514: The end of the Last Glacial Period , when sea levels were much lower reducing the distance between the Andaman Islands and the Asian mainland, with genetic estimates suggesting that the two main linguistic groups diverged around 16,000 years ago. Andamanese peoples are a genetically distinct group highly divergent from other Asians. Rajendra I took over the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. He used

7344-532: The end of the 19th century, European students of Chinese sought to solve this problem by applying the methods of historical linguistics that had been used in reconstructing Proto-Indo-European . Volpicelli (1896) and Schaank (1897) compared the rime tables at the front of the Kangxi Dictionary with modern pronunciations in several varieties, but had little knowledge of linguistics. Bernhard Karlgren , trained in transcription of Swedish dialects, carried out

7452-494: The entering tone was short (as the syllable ended in a voiceless stop) and probably high. The tone system of Middle Chinese is strikingly similar to those of its neighbours in the Mainland Southeast Asia linguistic area — proto-Hmong–Mien , proto-Tai and early Vietnamese —none of which is genetically related to Chinese. Moreover, the earliest strata of loans display a regular correspondence between tonal categories in

7560-532: The final into an optional "medial" glide ( yùntóu 韻頭 ), a main vowel or "nucleus" ( yùnfù 韻腹 ) and an optional final consonant or "coda" ( yùnwěi 韻尾 ). Most reconstructions of Middle Chinese include the glides /j/ and /w/ , as well as a combination /jw/ , but many also include vocalic "glides" such as /i̯/ in a diphthong /i̯e/ . Final consonants /j/ , /w/ , /m/ , /n/ , /ŋ/ , /p/ , /t/ and /k/ are widely accepted, sometimes with additional codas such as /wk/ or /wŋ/ . Rhyming syllables in

7668-509: The first man died and went to heaven, a pleasurable world, but this blissful period ended due to breaking a food taboo, specifically eating the forbidden vegetables in the Puluga's garden. Thus catastrophe ensued, and eventually the people grew overpopulated and didn't follow Puluga's laws,. Hence, there was a Great Flood that left four survivors, who lost their fire. Middle Chinese Middle Chinese (formerly known as Ancient Chinese ) or

7776-515: The first surfing project in the Andamans, starting from Phuket in Thailand with the assistance of Southeast Asia Liveaboards (SEAL), a UK owned dive charter company. With a crew of international professional surfers, they crossed the Andaman Sea on the yacht Crescent and cleared formalities in Port Blair. The group proceeded to Little Andaman Island, where they spent ten days surfing several spots for

7884-468: The first systematic survey of modern varieties of Chinese. He used the oldest known rime tables as descriptions of the sounds of the rime dictionaries, and also studied the Guangyun , at that time the oldest known rime dictionary. Unaware of Chen Li's study, he repeated the analysis of the fanqie required to identify the initials and finals of the dictionary. He believed that the resulting categories reflected

7992-544: The first time, including Jarawa Point near Hut Bay and the long right reef point at the southwest tip of the island, named Kumari Point. The resulting article in Surfer Magazine , "Quest for Fire" by journalist Sam George, put the Andaman Islands on the surfing map for the first time. Footage of the waves of the Andaman Islands also appeared in the film Thicker than Water , shot by documentary filmmaker Jack Johnson . Callahan went on to make several more surfing projects in

8100-400: The following table shows the pronunciation of the numerals in three modern Chinese varieties, as well as borrowed forms in Vietnamese, Korean and Japanese: Although the evidence from Chinese transcriptions of foreign words is much more limited, and is similarly obscured by the mapping of foreign pronunciations onto Chinese phonology, it serves as direct evidence of a sort that is lacking in all

8208-457: The island and its prison as Kala Pani ("black water"), named for kala pani , the Hindu proscription against traveling across the open sea. Incarceration on the Andamans thus threatened prisoners with the loss of their caste , and resultant social exclusion; a 1996 film set on the island took that term as its title, Kaalapani . The number of prisoners who died in this camp is estimated to be in

8316-494: The island's fisheries, timber, and agricultural resources. In exchange, inmates would be granted return passage to the Indian mainland, or the right to settle on the islands. J H Williams , one of the Bombay Burma Company's senior officials, was dispatched to perform a timber survey of the islands using convict labor. He recorded his findings in 'The Spotted Deer' (published in 1957 by Rupert Hart-Davis ). The penal colony

8424-497: The island, and as few as 50 speakers The Jangil are extinct. Most of the Great Andamanese tribes are extinct, and the survivors, now just 52, speak mostly Hindi . The Onge are reduced to less than 100 people. Only the Jarawa and Sentinelese still maintain a steadfast independence and refuse most attempts at contact; their numbers are uncertain but estimated to be in the low hundreds. The indigenous languages are collectively referred to as

8532-403: The islands, North Sentinel Island was still highly protected from outside contact. Special permission to allow researchers and anthropologists to visit could be sought. Chau had no special clearance and knew that his visit was illegal. Although a less restrictive system of approval to visit some of the islands now applies, with non-Indian nationals no longer required to obtain pre-approval with

8640-466: The islands. There are two volcanic islands, Narcondam Island and Barren Island , which have produced basalt and andesite . Barren Island is the only active volcano in the Indian sub-continent , with the latest eruption reported in December 2022, leading to the potential for geotourism . The climate is typical of tropical islands of similar latitude. It is always warm, but with sea breezes. Rainfall

8748-415: The level tone as mid ( ˧ or 33), the rising tone as mid rising ( ˧˥ or 35), the departing tone as high falling ( ˥˩ or 51), and the entering tone as ˧3ʔ. Some scholars have voiced doubts about the degree to which the names were descriptive, because they are also examples of the tone categories. Some descriptions from contemporaries and other data seem to suggest a somewhat different picture. For example,

8856-453: The mainland increased (at first mostly prisoners and involuntary indentured labourers , later purposely recruited farmers), the Andamanese suffered a population decline due to the introduction of outside infectious diseases , land encroachment from settlers and conflict. The Andaman Islands are home to the Sentinelese people , an uncontacted tribe . Due to their isolated island location,

8964-596: The medial (especially when it is /w/ ) or in so-called chongniu doublets. The Yunjing ( c.  1150 AD ) is the oldest of the so-called rime tables , which provide a more detailed phonological analysis of the system contained in the Qieyun . The Yunjing was created centuries after the Qieyun , and the authors of the Yunjing were attempting to interpret a phonological system that differed in significant ways from that of their own Late Middle Chinese (LMC) dialect. They were aware of this, and attempted to reconstruct Qieyun phonology as well as possible through

9072-589: The modern name Nicobar during the British colonial period. In 1789, the Bengal Presidency established a naval base and penal colony on Chatham Island in the southeast bay of Great Andaman . The settlement is now known as Port Blair (after the Bombay Marine lieutenant Archibald Blair who founded it). After two years, the colony was moved to the northeast part of Great Andaman and was named Port Cornwallis after Admiral William Cornwallis . However, there

9180-481: The most words, and one volume each for the other tones. The pitch contours of modern reflexes of the four Middle Chinese tones vary so widely that linguists have not been able to establish the probable Middle Chinese values by means of the comparative method . Karlgren interpreted the names of the first three tones literally as level, rising and falling pitch contours, respectively, and this interpretation remains widely accepted. Accordingly, Pan and Zhang reconstruct

9288-482: The murder of the Viceroy Richard Southwell Bourke, 6th Earl of Mayo , on a visit to the settlement (8 February 1872), by a Pathan from Afghanistan , Sher Ali Afridi . In the same year, the two island groups Andaman and Nicobar , were united under a chief commissioner residing at Port Blair. From the time of its development in 1858 under the direction of James Pattison Walker, and in response to

9396-405: The mutiny and rebellion of the previous year, the settlement was first and foremost a repository for political prisoners . The Cellular Jail at Port Blair, when completed in 1910, included 698 cells designed for solitary confinement; each cell measured 4.5 by 2.7 m (15 by 9 ft) with a single ventilation window 3 metres (10 ft) above the floor. The Indians imprisoned here referred to

9504-444: The northeastern Indian Ocean about 130 km (81 mi) southwest off the coasts of Myanmar 's Ayeyarwady Region . Together with the Nicobar Islands to their south, the Andamans serve as a maritime boundary between the Bay of Bengal to the west and the Andaman Sea to the east. Most of the islands are part of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands , a Union Territory of India , while

9612-404: The oldest known description of the tones, which is found in a Song dynasty quotation from the early 9th century Yuanhe Yunpu 元和韻譜 (no longer extant): Level tone is sad and stable. Rising tone is strident and rising. Departing tone is clear and distant. Entering tone is straight and abrupt. In 880, the Japanese monk Annen, citing an account from the early 8th century, stated the level tone

9720-569: The other types of data, since the pronunciation of the foreign languages borrowed from—especially Sanskrit and Gandhari —is known in great detail. For example, the nasal initials /m n ŋ/ were used to transcribe Sanskrit nasals in the early Tang, but later they were used for Sanskrit unaspirated voiced initials /b d ɡ/ , suggesting that they had become prenasalized stops [ᵐb] [ⁿd] [ᵑɡ] in some northwestern Chinese dialects. The rime dictionaries and rime tables yield phonological categories, but with little hint of what sounds they represent. At

9828-475: The population are the Andamanese — the aboriginal inhabitants ( adivasi ) of the islands. When they first came into sustained contact with outside groups in the 1850s, there were an estimated 7,000 Andamanese, divided into the Great Andamanese , Jarawa , Jangil (or Rutland Jarawa ), Onge , and the Sentinelese . The Great Andamanese formed 10 tribes of 5,000 people total. As the numbers of settlers from

9936-405: The pronunciation of all characters to be described exactly; earlier dictionaries simply described the pronunciation of unfamiliar characters in terms of the most similar-sounding familiar character. The fanqie system uses multiple equivalent characters to represent each particular initial, and likewise for finals. The categories of initials and finals actually represented were first identified by

10044-480: The rebellion led to the British holding a large number of prisoners, it made the new Andaman settlement and prison urgently necessary. Construction began in November 1857 at Port Blair using inmates' labour, avoiding the vicinity of a salt swamp that seemed to have been the source of many of the earlier problems at Port Cornwallis. The Battle of Aberdeen was fought on 17 May 1859 between the Great Andamanese tribe and

10152-420: The retroflex dentals are represented with the dentals, while elsewhere they have merged with the retroflex sibilants. In the south these have also merged with the dental sibilants, but the distinction is retained in most Mandarin dialects. The palatal series of modern Mandarin dialects, resulting from a merger of palatal allophones of dental sibilants and velars, is a much more recent development, unconnected with

10260-483: The second or fourth rows for some initials. Most linguists agree that division-III finals contained a /j/ medial and that division-I finals had no such medial, but further details vary between reconstructions. To account for the many rhyme classes distinguished by the Qieyun , Karlgren proposed 16 vowels and 4 medials. Later scholars have proposed numerous variations. The four tones of Middle Chinese were first listed by Shen Yue c.  500 AD . The first three,

10368-562: The speech standard of the capital Chang'an of the Sui and Tang dynasties . He interpreted the many distinctions as a narrow transcription of the precise sounds of this language, which he sought to reconstruct by treating the Sino-Xenic and modern dialect pronunciations as reflexes of the Qieyun categories. A small number of Qieyun categories were not distinguished in any of the surviving pronunciations, and Karlgren assigned them identical reconstructions. Karlgren's transcription involved

10476-440: The standard language of the late Tang dynasty. The preface of the Qieyun recovered in 1947 indicates that it records a compromise between northern and southern reading and poetic traditions from the late Northern and Southern dynasties period (a diasystem ). Most linguists now believe that no single dialect contained all the distinctions recorded, but that each distinction did occur somewhere. Several scholars have compared

10584-449: The standard reading pronunciation during the Tang dynasty , and went through several revisions and expansions over the following centuries. The Qieyun is thus the oldest surviving rhyme dictionary and the main source for the pronunciation of characters in Early Middle Chinese (EMC). At the time of Bernhard Karlgren 's seminal work on Middle Chinese in the early 20th century, only fragments of

10692-534: The thousands. Many more died of harsh treatment and the strenuous living and working conditions in this camp. The Viper Chain Gang Jail on Viper Island was reserved for extraordinarily troublesome prisoners and was also the site of hangings. In the 20th century, it became a convenient place to house prominent members of India's independence movement. The Andaman and Nicobar Islands were occupied by Japan during World War II . The islands were nominally put under

10800-500: The voiced fricatives /z/ and /ʐ/ are not distinguished from the voiced affricates /dz/ and /ɖʐ/ , respectively, and the retroflex stops are not distinguished from the dental stops. Several changes occurred between the time of the Qieyun and the rime tables: The following table shows a representative account of the initials of Late Middle Chinese. The voicing distinction is retained in modern Wu and Old Xiang dialects, but has disappeared from other varieties. In Min dialects

10908-435: The vowels in "outer" finals were more open than those in "inner" finals. The interpretation of the "divisions" is more controversial. Three classes of Qieyun finals occur exclusively in the first, second or fourth rows of the rime tables, respectively, and have thus been labelled finals of divisions I, II and IV. The remaining finals are labelled division-III finals because they occur in the third row, but they may also occur in

11016-419: The west coast of Burma. Most of the forests are evergreen, but there are areas of deciduous forest on North Andaman, Middle Andaman , Baratang and parts of South Andaman Island . The South Andaman forests have a profuse growth of epiphytic vegetation, mostly ferns and orchids. The Andaman forests are largely unspoiled, despite logging and the demands of the fast-growing population driven by immigration from

11124-470: Was Governor of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, which had been annexed to the Provisional Government. According to Werner Gruhl: "Before leaving the islands, the Japanese rounded up and executed 750 innocents ." At the close of World War II, the British government announced its intention to shut down the penal settlement. The government proposed to employ former inmates in an initiative to develop

11232-556: Was eventually closed on 15 August 1947 when India gained independence . It has since served as a museum to the independence movement . Most of the Andaman Islands became part of the Republic of India in 1950 and was declared as a union territory of the nation in 1956, while the Preparis Island and Coco Islands became part of the Yangon Region of Myanmar in 1948. In April 1998, American photographer John S. Callahan organised

11340-561: Was much disease and death in the penal colony and the government ceased operating it in May 1796. In 1824, Port Cornwallis was the rendezvous of the fleet carrying the army to the First Burmese War . In the 1830s and 1840s, shipwrecked crews who landed on the Andamans were often attacked and killed by the natives and the islands had a reputation for cannibalism . The loss of the Runnymede and

11448-597: Was recorded as "Andeman Mountain" (安得蠻山, pronounced āndémán shān in modern Mandarin Chinese) during the voyages of Zheng He in the Mao Kun map of the Wu Bei Zhi . The oldest archaeological evidence for the habitation of the islands dates to the 1st millennium BC . Genetic evidence suggests that the indigenous Andamanese peoples share a common origin, and that the islands were settled sometime after 26,000 years ago, possibly at

11556-407: Was straight and low, ... the rising tone was straight and high, ... the departing tone was slightly drawn out, ... the entering tone stops abruptly Based on Annen's description, other similar statements and related data, Mei Tsu-lin concluded that the level tone was long, level and low, the rising tone was short, level and high, the departing tone was somewhat long and probably high and rising, and

11664-625: Was the first to attempt a reconstruction of the sounds of Middle Chinese , comparing its categories with modern varieties of Chinese and the Sino-Xenic pronunciations used in the reading traditions of neighbouring countries. Several other scholars have produced their own reconstructions using similar methods. The Qieyun system is often used as a framework for Chinese dialectology. With the exception of Min varieties, which show independent developments from Old Chinese, modern Chinese varieties can be largely treated as divergent developments from Middle Chinese. The study of Middle Chinese also provides for

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