Ngadha language
| Ngadha | |
|---|---|
| Native to | Indonesia |
| Region | Flores |
Native speakers | ca. 65,000 (1994–1995)[1] |
|
Austronesian
| |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 |
Either: nxg – Ngad'a nea – Eastern Ngad'a |
| Glottolog |
ngad1261 (Ngad'a)[2]east2464 (Eastern Ngad'a)[3] |
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.[4] 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).[5]
Ngadha is the only language reported to have a retroflex implosive /ᶑ /.[6]
Ngadha is "bizarre" because it has no prefixes nor suffixes at all.[7] This "strangely streamlined language" is thought by linguist John McWhorter to have originated when "little people" were "subjugated" into the Austronesian population.[7] McWhorter (2006) speculates this rare linguistic transformation would have occurred to the ancestor of Ngadha and the related Keo and Rongga languages.[7] 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.[8]
References
- ↑ Ngad'a at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
Eastern Ngad'a at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) - ↑ Nordhoff, Sebastian; Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2013). "Ngad'a". Glottolog. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
- ↑ Nordhoff, Sebastian; Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2013). "Eastern Ngad'a". Glottolog. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
- ↑ 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.
- 1 2 3 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.
External links
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