Ngadha (, also spelled Ngada, Ngada or Ngada) is an

Austronesian language The Austronesian languages ( ) are a language family widely spoken throughout Maritime Southeast Asia, parts of Mainland Southeast Asia, Madagascar, the islands of the Pacific Ocean and Taiwan (by Taiwanese indigenous peoples). They are spoken b ...

, one of six languages spoken in the central stretch of the

Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania, between the Indian Ocean, Indian and Pacific Ocean, Pacific oceans. Comprising over List of islands of Indonesia, 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, ...

n island of

Flores Flores is one of the Lesser Sunda Islands, a group of islands in the eastern half of Indonesia. Administratively, it forms the largest island in the East Nusa Tenggara Province. The area is 14,250 km2. Including Komodo and Rinca islands ...

. 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 The Sumba–Flores languages, which correspond to the traditional "Bima–Sumba" subgroup minus Bima, are a proposed group of Austronesian languages (geographically Central–Eastern Malayo-Polynesian languages) spoken on and around the islands ...

, according to Blust (2009). Djawanai (1983) precises that Ngadha somewhat deviates from Austronesian norms, in that words do not have clear

cognate In historical linguistics, cognates or lexical cognates are sets of words that have been inherited in direct descent from an etymological ancestor in a common parent language. Because language change can have radical effects on both the s ...

s and the grammatical processes are different; 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 er-orm or child

hood Hood may refer to: Covering Apparel * Hood (headgear), type of head covering ** Article of academic dress ** Bondage hood, sex toy * Hoodie, hooded sweatshirt Anatomy * Clitoral hood, a hood of skin surrounding the clitoris * Hood, a flap of ...

, whereas the Ngadha language uses no prefixes or suffixes. Ngadha is one of the few languages with a retroflex implosive .

Phonology

The sound system of Ngadha is as follows.

Vowels

The short vowel is written followed by a double consonant, since phonetically a consonant becomes

geminate In phonetics and phonology, gemination (; from Latin 'doubling', itself from '' gemini'' 'twins'), or consonant lengthening, is an articulation of a consonant for a longer period of time than that of a singleton consonant. It is distinct from ...

after . It is never stressed and does not form sequences with other vowels except where glottal stop has dropped (e.g. 'six', from 'five' and 'one'). Within vowel sequences,

epenthetic In phonology, epenthesis (; Greek ) means the addition of one or more sounds to a word, especially in the first syllable ('' prothesis''), the last syllable ('' paragoge''), or between two syllabic sounds in a word. The opposite process in whi ...

may appear after an unrounded vowel (e.g. in , ) and after a rounded vowel (e.g. in , ). Double vowels are sequences. Vowels tend to be voiceless between voiceless consonants and pre-pausa after voiceless consonants. Stress is on the penultimate syllable, unless that contains the vowel , in which case stress is on the final syllable.

Consonants

The implosives have been spelled , and . The

velar Velar may refer to: * Velar consonant Velar consonants are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue (the dorsum) against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth (also known as the "velum"). Since the velar region ...

fricative A fricative is a consonant produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate in ...

s are spelled . The

trill TRILL (Transparent Interconnection of Lots of Links) is a networking protocol for optimizing bandwidth and resilience in Ethernet networks, implemented by devices called TRILL switches. TRILL combines techniques from bridging and routing, and ...

is short, and may have only one or two contacts. Glottal stop contrasts with zero in initial position, as in 'drink', or 'tiny'. In rapid speech it tends to drop intervocalically. Phonetically words are analyzed as having an initial schwa. In initial position the consonant is always voiced (otherwise the schwa remains). Examples are 'father', 'mosquito', 'sand', (name), 'swadling sling', 'grandparents', (name), 'sun' – also in medial position with voiceless consonants, as in 'six'.

References

External links

* {{Languages of Indonesia Languages of Indonesia Sumba languages Flores Island (Indonesia) Isolating languages