Nicobarese

Nicobarese is a group of closely related Austroasiatic languages spoken across the Nicobar Islands, in the eastern Indian Ocean northwest of Sumatra. The most widely used is Car, while the Shompen of Great Nicobar's interior speak a closely related lect.

The islands were known to maritime peoples early: the name Nakkavaram appears on a Tamil Chola inscription of 1050, the Persian navigator Abu Zayd al-Sirafi described them in the ninth century, and both Marco Polo's account and Zheng He's charts mark them.

Organized European contact began when the Danish East India Company claimed the islands in 1754 and administered them from Tranquebar as the Frederiksøerne. Malaria wrecked the Moravian mission on Nancowry and forced repeated abandonments between 1784 and 1834, so the islanders and their languages were only lightly touched by outside rule in this period.