The Nicobarese Languages

compiled by George Weber

The Nicobari languages are littlereported and researched. What little literature is on them is usually limited to Car Nicobarese. Yet the languages of the other islands so differ from each other thatthe should be considered separate languages within the same family.

The Shompen language is still less known and may not even be a Nicobarese language (altho8gh it seems to have absorbed many Nicobarese elements). Too little is known of it to classify Shompen with any degree of certainty.

The enormous 4-colume "International Encyclopaedia of Linguistics" from Oxford University, 1992, has only very little to say about the Nicobarese languages, and gives no literature on it at all:

One of the very few books on the language groups is G. Whitehead's Dictonary of the Car-Nicobarese Language, American Baptist Mission Press, Rangoon, 1925. The introduction to this work reproduced below is also interesting for the revealing light it throws on the opinions held by "educated society" in the colonies around the time.

[ Go to HOME ] [ Go to HEAD OF NICOBAR CHAPTER ]

Last changed 27 August 2006