Car language

Car (Pū) is the most widely spoken of the Nicobarese languages spoken in the Nicobar Islands of India.

Not to be confused with the Kar language of Burkina Faso.
Car
Pū
Pronunciation[puː]
Native toIndia
RegionNicobar Islands
Native speakers
37,000 (2005)[1]
Latin script
Language codes
ISO 639-3caq
Glottologcarn1240[2]
Car
Car
Coordinates: 9.19°N 92.77°E / 9.19; 92.77

Although related distantly to Vietnamese and Khmer, it is typologically much more akin to nearby Austronesian languages such as Nias and Acehnese, with which it forms a linguistic area.[3]

Car is a VOS language and somewhat agglutinative.[4] There is a quite complicated verbal suffix system with some infixes, as well as distinct genitive and "interrogative" cases for nouns and pronouns.[5]

Phonology

Consonants
Labial Alveolar/
Retroflex		 Palatal Velar Glottal
Plosive p t c k ʔ
Nasal m n ɲ ŋ
Fricative f v s h
Tap ɾ ɽ
Approximant l j
  • The alveolar flap can typically be pre-stopped. Before a voiceless consonant, its pre-articulation is voiceless as [ᵗɾ], and elsewhere it is voiced [ᵈɾ].

Vowels
Front Central Back
Close i ɨ u
Close-mid e ɤ o
Mid ɛ ə ɔ
Open (æ) a
  • /æ/ only occurs because of the occurrence of English loanwords.
  • Vowel sounds are also typically short when occurring before an /h/.[6]

References
  1. Car at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
  2. Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). "Car Nicobarese". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
  3. Cysouw, Michael; Quantitative explorations of the world-wide distribution of rare characteristics, or: the exceptionality of north-western European languages Archived 2009-05-14 at the Wayback Machine; pp. 11-12
  4. WALS: Nicobarese
  5. Whitehead, Rev. G.; Dictionary of the Car (Nicobarese) language; published 1925 by American Baptist Mission Press; pp. xxvi-xxxii
  6. Sidwell, Paul (2015). Car Nicobarese. The Handbook of Austroasiatic Languages: Leiden: Brill. pp. 1231–1240.
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