Six distinct dialects and languages are spoken in the Archipelago--one on Kar Nicobar, another on Chaura; Teressa and Bompoka together have one; the central islands of Kamorta, Nankauri, Trinkat, and Kachal speak a fourth; while Little and Great Nicobar with their adjacent islands have a fifth. Lastly, the Shom Pe[.n] of the interior of Great Nicobar employ a speech that is dissimilar to the others. The language, which is somewhat harsh in sound, has, however, "an extraordinarily rich, phonetic system--as many as twenty-five consonantal and thirty-five vowel sounds (it possesses a peculiar double series of nasal vowels)--is polysyllabic, and untoned, like the Malayo-Polynesian, and the type seems to resemble the Oceanic more than the Continental Mongol subdivision."[153] * * * * * This is the theory of the Kar Nicobarese with regard to their origin:-- A certain man, from some unknown country, arrived at the Nicobars on a flat, with a pet female dog, and settled in Kar Nicobar. In course of time he espoused the bitch, and begot a son. When this son was grown up, he concealed his mother by covering her with a _ngong_, a kind of petticoat made of coco-palm leaves, and, after killing his father in the jungle, took his mother to wife. From such parents the Nicobarese believe they originated, and it is their progeny who now people the island. The two-horned head-dress--_tá-chökla_--worn by all males, they consider symbolic of their mother's ears; the end of the loin-cloth that dangles behind, they call her tail; and the piece of cotton reaching to the women's knees only, they compare with the _ngong_ petticoat, which was her first dress. Until comparatively recently, this _ngong_--a thick fringe of palm leaf about 15 inches deep, inserted in a band--was in universal wear (see Koeping, Hamilton, Lancaster, and others) and, even now, it is worn sometimes by the women when working in the plantations. It is also worn at Teressa, and still more at Chaura.[154] Another version of the legend varies somewhat, making the father a dog and the mother a woman. It is owing to this belief that the natives say they are sons of a dog, and for this reason they treat their dogs very kindly, and never beat them: they quiet them by simply saying "Hush! hush!" There is another tradition amongst the Nicobarese, to the effect that the first stranger who came to their islands, seeing something moving on the sand, perceived small people the size of an ant. He took care of them until they attained the common size of men--and this was the origin of the natives.[155] To account for the coconut trees that grow in such abundance on the island, the Kar Nicobarese version runs thus:--