Car (Pū) is the most widely spoken of the Nicobarese languages spoken in the Nicobar Islands of India.
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.
Car is a VOS language and somewhat agglutinative. There is a quite complicated verbal suffix system with some infixes, as well as distinct genitive and “interrogative” cases for nouns and pronouns.
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 , and elsewhere it is voiced .
Vowels
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Close | i | ɨ | u |
| Close-mid | e | ɤ | o |
| Open-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/.
Vocabulary
Paul Sidwell (2017) published in ICAAL 2017 conference on Nicobarese languages.
| Word | Car | proto-Nicobarese |
|---|---|---|
| hot | taɲ | *taɲ |
| four | fɛːn | *foan |
| child | kuːn | *kuːn |
| lip | (minuh) | *manuːɲ |
| dog | ʔam | *ʔam |
| night | hatəːm | *hatəːm |
| male | koːɲ | *koːɲ |
| ear | naŋ | *naŋ |
| one | heŋ | *hiaŋ |
| belly | (ʔac) | *ʔac |
| sun | (tavuːj) | – |
| sweet | (pacaːka) | – |
| overflow | tareːci | *roac |
| nose | mɛh | *moah |
| breast | tɛh | *toah |
| to cough | ʔɛhɛ | *ʔoah |
| arm | kɛl | *koal |
| in, inside | ʔɛl | *ʔoal |
| four | feːn | *foan |
| elbow | sikɔŋ | *keaŋ |
Morphology
Shared morphological alternations: the old AA causative has two allomorphs, prefix ha- with monosyllabic stems, infix -um- in disyllabic stems (note: *p > h onset in unstressed σ).
- ɲa – ‘to eat’ / haɲaː ‘to feed’
- pɯɲ – ‘to cry’ / hapɯɲ-ɲɔː ‘to make cry’
- kucik – ‘be palatable’ / kumcik ‘to taste’
- kale – ‘brave’ / kumle ‘bravery’