Nicobar Islands · Island Realms
Nicobarese is Austroasiatic — the family of Khasi, Munda, Khmer and Vietnamese — which puts these islands in the same linguistic world as the Meghalaya hills and mainland Southeast Asia and gives them no relationship at all to the Andamanese languages across the Ten Degree Channel. Within the group there are at least six languages, and a speaker from Car Nicobar cannot simply be understood in the Nancowry group or on Great Nicobar. The Car Nicobarese language has by far the most speakers and, since the Bible translation of 1970 and the mission schools, the most written life. The Shompen language of interior Great Nicobar is Austroasiatic too but stands apart, and it is documented only lightly, because contact is limited by law and by the community's own practice.
Speech varieties
Written in Roman script through mission use, with a printed Bible and hymnals, and the variety most often meant when "Nicobarese" is used without qualification.
Speakers: The largest Nicobarese speech community, on Car Nicobar
Several closely related varieties around the Nancowry harbour. Nineteenth-century European linguistic work on Nicobarese was largely done here, because the harbour is where the ships stopped.
Distinct northern varieties. Chowra's linguistic separateness sits alongside its economic separateness as the pottery island.
The southernmost Nicobarese varieties, spoken by coastal villages on the two largest and least populous islands.
Reported to vary between bands to the point of limited mutual intelligibility. Linguistic and genetic studies exist but the material is thin, and the community's contact with outsiders is restricted by law.
Speakers: A few hundred, in the interior of Great Nicobar
Indigenous terminology
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Tuhet | The joint family that is the property-holding unit of Nicobarese society. Coconut land, pigs and canoes are owned by the tuhet in common rather than by individuals, which is why inheritance disputes here are between families rather than within them. |
| Elpanam | The village's public complex — meeting house, lying-in house, mortuary and burial ground together. A single named institution combining functions that most societies keep apart. |
| Hodi | The outrigger canoe, dugout-hulled with a single float. Transport, fishing craft, racing boat and the territory's first geographical indication. |
| Kareau / hentakoi | The carved guardian figure set outside a house against illness and misfortune, made by a ritual specialist and replaced when it is judged to have stopped working. |
| Menluana | The ritual specialist and healer who carves the kareau and deals with the causes of illness. Recorded widely in the ethnographic literature on the group. |
| Larop | Pandanus paste, in Shompen usage — the staple starch of the interior of Great Nicobar. |
| Chatrai-hileuoi | The Nicobari mat, under the name in which it holds its geographical indication. |
| Chanvi Pati — Nyi hupul | The Nicobari hut, under the name in which it holds its geographical indication. The building type, not a single building. |
| Tavi-i-Ngaich | Nicobari virgin coconut oil, under its registered geographical indication name. |
| Ten Degree Channel | The 150 km strait separating Little Andaman from Car Nicobar, and with it two unrelated language families, two architectures and two economies. The most consequential piece of water in the union territory. |
Speech varieties, indigenous terminology and sayings of Nicobar Islands. (10)