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

Car
Pū
Pronunciation	[puː]
Native to	India
Region	Nicobar Islands
Native speakers	37,000 (2005)[1]
Language family	Austroasiatic Nicobarese Car
Writing system	Latin script
Language codes
ISO 639-3	caq
Glottolog	carn1240
ELP	Car Nicobarese
Car Show map of Andaman and Nicobar Islands Car Show map of Bay of Bengal
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.[2]

Car is a VOS language and somewhat agglutinative.[3] There is a quite complicated verbal suffix system with some infixes, as well as distinct genitive and "interrogative" cases for nouns and pronouns.[4]

Phonology

Consonants

• 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

• /æ/ only occurs because of the occurrence of English loanwords.
• Vowel sounds are also typically short when occurring before an /h/.[5]

Vocabulary

Paul Sidwell (2017)[6] published in ICAAL 2017 conference on Nicobarese languages.

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'

References

На других языках

[de] Car (Sprache)

[fr] Car (langue)

[it] Lingua car

[ru] Кар (язык)