Ngadha (also known as Ngada or Ngad'a) is an Austronesian language, one of six languages spoken in the central stretch of the Indonesian island of Flores.[2] From west to east these languages are: Ngadha, Nage, Keo, Ende, Lio, and Palu'e. These languages form the proposed Central Flores group of the Sumba–Flores languages, according to Blust (2009).[3]
| Ngadha | |
|---|---|
| Native to | Indonesia |
| Region | Flores |
Native speakers | (ca. 65,000 cited 1994–1995)[1] |
Austronesian
| |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | Either:nxg – Ngad'anea – Eastern Ngad'a |
| Glottolog | ngad1261 Ngad'aeast2464 Eastern Ngad'a |
Ngadha is the only language reported to have a retroflex implosive /ᶑ /.[4]
Ngadha is "bizarre" because it has no prefixes nor suffixes at all.[5] This "strangely streamlined language" is thought by linguist John McWhorter to have originated when "little people" were "subjugated" into the Austronesian population.[5] McWhorter (2006) speculates this rare linguistic transformation would have occurred to the ancestor of Ngadha and the related Keo and Rongga languages.[5] Nonetheless, in basic vocabulary, such as body parts, numbers, and action verbs, Ngadha has kept 94 out of a list of 247 lexical items of the Proto-Malayo-Polynesian language.[6]
References
- ^ Ngad'a at Ethnologue (17th ed., 2013)
Eastern Ngad'a at Ethnologue (17th ed., 2013)
- ^ Rongga Documentation Project, Australian National University.
- ^ Robert Blust, 2009. "Is there a Bima-Sumba subgroup?" In Oceanic Linguistics
- ^ Djawanai, Stephanus. (1977). A description of the basic phonology of Nga'da and the treatment of borrowings. NUSA linguistic studies in Indonesian and languages in Indonesia, 5, 10-18.
- ^ a b c John McWhorter, What We Believe but Cannot Prove, pp. 68-70 (ed. Ian McEwan) (Harper 2006).
- ^ "Austronesian Basic Vocabulary Database, Language: Ngadha". language.psy.auckland.ac.nz. Retrieved July 18, 2012.
