Car language
| Car | |
|---|---|
| Pū | |
| Pronunciation | [puː] |
| Native to | India |
| Region | Nicobar Islands |
Native speakers | 37,000 (2005) |
| Latin script | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | caq |
| Glottolog | carn1240 |
| ELP | Car Nicobarese |
Pū is classified as Critically Endangered according to the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger | |
| Coordinates: 9°11′N 92°46′E / 9.19°N 92.77°E | |
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.