Car language

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. 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.

Consonants

 * The alveolar flap can typically be pre-stopped. Before a voiceless consonant, its pre-articulation is voiceless as, and elsewhere it is voiced.

Vowels

 * only occurs in English loanwords.
 * Vowel sounds are also typically short when occurring before an.

Vocabulary
Paul Sidwell (2017) 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'