"Nicobarese" redirects here. For the indigenous peoples, see Nicobarese people

Nicobarese people

The Nicobarese people are a Mon–Khmer-speaking people of the Nicobar Islands, a chain of 19 islands in the southeastern Bay of Bengal. Only 12 of the 19 islands are inhabited. The largest and main island is Great Nicobar. The term Nicobarese refers to the dominant tribes of the Nicobar Islands. On...

The Nicobarese languages form an isolated group of half a dozen closely related Austro-Asiatic languages

Austro-Asiatic languages

The Austro-Asiatic languages, in recent classifications synonymous with Mon–Khmer, are a large language family of Southeast Asia, also scattered throughout India and Bangladesh. The name Austro-Asiatic comes from the Latin words for "south" and "Asia", hence "South Asia"...

, spoken by the majority of the inhabitants of the Nicobar Islands

Nicobar Islands

The Nicobar Islands are an archipelagic island chain in the eastern Indian Ocean...

 of India

India

India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

. They have a total of about 30,000 speakers (22,100 native). The majority of Nicobarese speakers use the Car language

Car language

Car 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 nearly Austronesian languages such as Nias and Acehnese, with which it forms a linguistic area.Car is a VOS...

.

They appear to be unrelated to the Shompen languages

Shompen languages

The Shompen languages are spoken on Great Nicobar Island in the Indian union territory of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in the Indian Ocean south of Burma....

 of the indigenous inhabitants

Indigenous peoples

Indigenous peoples are ethnic groups that are defined as indigenous according to one of the various definitions of the term, there is no universally accepted definition but most of which carry connotations of being the "original inhabitants" of a territory....

 of the interior of Great Nicobar Island.

The morphological similarities between Nicobarese and Austronesian languages

Austronesian languages

The Austronesian languages are a language family widely dispersed throughout the islands of Southeast Asia and the Pacific, with a few members spoken on continental Asia that are spoken by about 386 million people. It is on par with Indo-European, Niger-Congo, Afroasiatic and Uralic as one of the...

 have been used to help support the Austric hypothesis.

Nicobarese languages

From north to south:

• Car
  Car language
  Car 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 nearly Austronesian languages such as Nias and Acehnese, with which it forms a linguistic area.Car is a VOS...
  
  
• Chaura–Teressa: Chaura
  Chaura language
  Chaura, or Tutet, is one of the Nicobarese languages spoken on the Nicobar Islands.It had approximately 2,000 speakers in the year 2000....
  
   (Sanenya), Teressa
  Teressa language
  Teressa, or Taih-Long, is one of the Nicobarese languages spoken on the Nicobar Islands. Bompoka dialect is distinct....
  
   (Bompoka dialect)
• Central Nicobarese languages: Camorta, Nancowry, Katchal (Trinket dialect)
• Southern Nicobarese
  Southern Nicobarese language
  Southern Nicobarese, also known as Nicobara, Great Nicobarese, and Sambelong, is a Nicobarese language, spoken on the Sambelong Southern Nicobar Islands of Little Nicobar, Great Nicobar, and a couple small neighboring islands, Kondul and Pulo Milo...
  
  or 'Sambelong'

Further reading

• Adams, K. L. (1989). Systems of numeral classification in the Mon–Khmer, Nicobarese and Aslian subfamilies of Austroasiatic. Canberra, A.C.T., Australia: Dept. of Linguistics, Research School of Pacific Studies, Australian National University. ISBN 0858833735
• Radhakrishnan, R. (1981). The Nancowry Word: Phonology, Affixal Morphology and Roots of a Nicobarese Language. Current Inquiry Into Language and Linguistics 37. Linguistic Research Inc., P.O. Box 5677, Station 'L', Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, T6C 4G1. ISBN 0-88783-041-2

External links

• The Nicobarese by Dr. Simron Jit Singh