"A great amount of coaxing was needed to make two of the 'best speaker' converse in their own language. Within no time they started taking recourse to Hindi. The only occasion where a member of the tribe would spontaneously use the 'heritage language' with another was to exclude a perceived 'outsider' from the conversation. It can be said that the language at this stage is best used as a 'secret code' rather than as a standard mode of communication." (p. 18)

"The members who are below forty are monolingual in Hindi, which they use as a lingua franca as well as the home language. Some of the members of the younger generation, especially teenage children, also speak a fe words and phrases of English and other Indian languages, such as Bangla and Tamil... Marriage outside the community also further adds to this language pool." (p.25)

Critically endangered

"It is a real challenge to work on this language as the depleting number of speakers and their reduced ability to speak the language conceals many important linguistic facts rather than revealing them. The fluent speakers are not more than five or six."

"The Great Andamanese, especially those who visit Port Blair frequently, have a functional knowledge of Hindi and Bangla. Some of them also understand a few words spoken in English."