Using Greek phonetic values of letters investigators of the 19th and 20th centuries were unable to make headway and erroneously classified the language as non-Indo-European.

By 1993 the so-called "Ray-Schürr-Adiego System" was generally accepted, and its basic correctness was confirmed in 1996 when in Kaunos (Caria) a new Greek-Carian bilingual was discovered, where the Carian names nicely matched their Greek counterparts.

A striking feature of Carian is the presence of large consonant clusters, due to a tendency to not write short vowels.

Across the various sites where inscriptions have been found, the two lateral phonemes /l/ and /λ/ contrast but may be represented by different letters of the Carian script 𐊣/𐋎, 𐊦, and 𐋃/𐋉 depending on the location.

The dative case is assumed to be present also, based on related Anatolian languages and the frequency of dedicatory inscriptions, but its form is quite unclear.

Features that help identify the language as Anatolian include the asigmatic nominative (without the Indo-European nominative ending *-s) but -s for a genitive ending: 𐊿𐊸𐊫𐊦 wśoλ, 𐊿𐊸𐊫𐊦𐊰 wśoλ-s.[14][clarification needed][need quotation to verify] The similarity of the basic vocabulary to other Anatolian languages also confirms this e.g. 𐊭𐊺𐊢 ted "father"; 𐊺𐊵 en "mother".

If verbal conjugation in Carian resembles the other Anatolian languages, one would expect 3rd person singular or plural forms, in both present and preterite, to end in -t or -d, or a similar sound.

In a Carian-Greek bilingual from Kaunos the first two words in Carian are kbidn uiomλn, corresponding to Greek ἔδοξε Καυνίοις, 'Kaunos decided' (literally: 'it seemed right to the Kaunians').

Several more words ending in a nasal are suspected to be verbal forms, for example mδane, mlane, mλn (cf.

Personal names in Carian were usually written as "A, [son] of B" (where B is in the genitive, formally recognizable from its genitival ending -ś).

The word 𐊰𐊠𐊵 san is equivalent to τόδε and evidences the Anatolian language assibilation, parallel to Luwian za-, "this".

They assumed for purposes of collaboration new regional names based on their previous locations: Ionia, Doris.

The writers born in these new cities reported that the people among whom they had settled were called Carians and spoke a language that was "barbarian", "barbaric" or "barbarian-sounding" (i.e. not Greek).

Such names as Andanus, Myndus, Bybassia, Larymna, Chysaoris, Alabanda, Plarasa and Iassus were puzzling to the Greeks, some of whom attempted to give etymologies in words they said were Carian.

Its occurrence in various places of Classical Greece is due only to the travel habits of Carians[citation needed], who apparently became co-travellers of the Ionians.

Hellenization would lead to the extinction of the Carian language in the 1st century BCE or early in the Common Era.