| Car | |
| Nativename: | Pū |
| Pronunciation: | pronounced as /[puː]/ |
| States: | India |
| Region: | Nicobar Islands |
| Pushpin Map: | India Andaman and Nicobar Islands#Bay of Bengal |
| Coordinates: | 9.19°N 92.77°W |
| Speakers: | 37,000 |
| Date: | 2005 |
| Ref: | e18 |
| Familycolor: | Austro-Asiatic |
| Fam2: | Nicobarese |
| Script: | Latin script |
| Iso3: | caq |
| Glotto: | carn1240 |
| Glottorefname: | Car Nicobarese |
Car (Pū) is the most widely spoken Nicobarese language of the Nicobar Islands in the Bay of Bengal.
Although a member of the Austroasiatic language family, it is typologically much more akin to nearby Austronesian languages such as Nias and Acehnese, with which it forms a linguistic area.[1] Car is a VOS language and somewhat agglutinative.[2] There is a quite complicated verbal suffix system with some infixes, as well as distinct genitive and "interrogative" cases for nouns and pronouns.[3]
| Labial | Alveolar/ Retroflex | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plosive | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | |
| Nasal | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | ||
| Fricative | pronounced as /link/ pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | |||
| Tap | pronounced as /link/ pronounced as /link/ | |||||
| Approximant | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ |
| Front | Central | Back | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Close | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | |
| Close-mid | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | |
| Open-mid | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | |
| Open | (pronounced as /link/) | pronounced as /link/ |
Paul Sidwell (2017)[5] published in ICAAL 2017 conference on Nicobarese languages.
| Word | Car | proto-Nicobarese | |
|---|---|---|---|
| hot | taɲ |
| |
| four | fɛːn |
| |
| child | kuːn |
| |
| lip | (minuh) |
| |
| dog | ʔam |
| |
| night | hatəːm |
| |
| male | koːɲ |
| |
| ear | naŋ |
| |
| one | heŋ |
| |
| belly | (ʔac) |
| |
| sun | (tavuːj) | - | |
| sweet | (pacaːka) | - | |
| overflow | tareːci |
| |
| nose | mɛh |
| |
| breast | tɛh |
| |
| to cough | ʔɛhɛ |
| |
| arm | kɛl |
| |
| in, inside | ʔɛl |
| |
| elbow | sikɔŋ |
|
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).