Nicobarese languages

"Nicobarese" redirects here. For the indigenous peoples, see Nicobarese people.
Nicobarese
Ethnicity: Nicobarese people
Geographic
distribution:
Nicobar Islands
Linguistic classification:

Austroasiatic

  • Nicobarese
Subdivisions:
  • Car
  • Chaura–Teressa
  • Central
  • Southern
Glottolog: nico1262[1]

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The Nicobar Islands. Car is at top.

The Nicobarese or Nicobaric languages form an isolated group of half a dozen closely related Austroasiatic languages, spoken by the majority of the inhabitants of the Nicobar Islands of India. They have a total of about 30,000 speakers (22,100 native). The majority of Nicobarese speakers use the Car language.

They appear to be at best distantly related to the Shompen languages of the indigenous inhabitants of the interior of Great Nicobar Island.[2]

The morphological similarities between Nicobarese and Austronesian languages have been used to help support the Austric hypothesis.

From north to south:

Further reading

See also

References

  1. Nordhoff, Sebastian; Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2013). "Nicobaric". Glottolog. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
  2. Blench, Roger, and Paul Sidwell. 2011. "Is Shom Pen a Distinct Branch?" In Sophana Srichampa and Paul Sidwell, eds. Austroasiatic Studies: Papers from ICAAL 4. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.

External links

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