Ngadha language

Not to be confused with Nga:da language.
Ngadha
Bahasa Ngadha
Native toIndonesia
RegionFlores
Native speakers
(ca. 65,000 cited 1994–1995)[1]
Language codes
ISO 639-3Either:
nxg – Ngadʼa
nea – Eastern Ngadʼa
Glottologngad1261

Ngadha (IPA: [ŋaᶑa], also spelled Ngada, Ngadʼa or Ngaʼda[2]) is an Austronesian language, one of six languages spoken in the central stretch of the Indonesian island of Flores.[3] 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).[4]

Djawanai (1983) precises that Ngadha somewhat deviates from Austronesian norms, in that words do not have clear cognates and the grammatical processes are different;[5] for example, the Austronesian family of languages makes an abundant use of prefixes or suffixes (which form new words by adding extensions either before or after root-words, such as [per-]form or child[-hood]), whereas the Ngadha language uses no prefixes or suffixes.[6]

Ngadha is one of the few languages with a retroflex implosive /ᶑ /.

  1. ^ Ngadʼa at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
    Eastern Ngadʼa at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
  2. ^ Djawanai, Stephanas; Grimes, Charles E. (1985). "Ngada". In Darrell T. Tryon (ed.). Comparative Austronesian Dictionary: An Introduction to Austronesian Studies. Berlin: Mouton De Gruyter. pp. 593–599. doi:10.1515/9783110884012.1.593.
  3. ^ "Introduction". Rongga Documentation Project. Archived from the original on 2006-08-24. Retrieved 2006-12-19.
  4. ^ Blust, Robert (2008). "Is There a Bima-Sumba Subgroup?". Oceanic Linguistics. 47 (1): 45–113. doi:10.1353/ol.0.0006. JSTOR 20172340. S2CID 144311741.
  5. ^ Djawanai 1983, p. 2.
  6. ^ Peter ten Hoopen. "Ikat from Ngadha, Indonesia". ikat.us. Online Museum of Indonesian ikat textiles, curator: Dr Peter Ten Hoopen. Retrieved 2024-06-08.