Rongga is a language of central

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 ...

, in

East Nusa Tenggara East Nusa Tenggara (; ) is the southernmost province of Indonesia. It comprises the eastern portion of the Lesser Sunda Islands, facing the Indian Ocean in the south and the Flores Sea in the north, with a total land area of 47,238.07 km2. It cons ...

Province,

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, ...

. Rongga is closely related to

Ngadha Ngadha (, also spelled Ngada, Ngada or Ngada) is an Austronesian language, one of six languages spoken in the central stretch of the Indonesian island of Flores. From west to east these languages are Ngadha, Nage, Keo, Ende, Lio, and Palu'e. The ...

, and more distantly to

Manggarai The Manggarai are an ethnic group found in western Flores in the East Nusa Tenggara province, Indonesia. Manggarai people are spread across three regencies in the province, namely the West Manggarai Regency, Manggarai Regency, and East Manggar ...

. Arka, I Wayan (2005). ‘Challenges and Prospect of Maintaining Rongga: A Preliminary Ethnographic Report’, in Ilana Mushin (ed.), Proceedings of the (2004) Conference of the Australian Linguistics Society. Locally, it is considered part of the Manggarai culture; however, its closer linguistic relatives include

and

Lio Lio or LIO may refer to: People *Lio (singer) (born 1962), Belgian singer and actress * Leonel Cunha Guerra (born 1987), Portuguese football player known as Lio * Lee Hyung-sang, nickname Lio (1985), South Korean football player * L.I.O. Petrodol ...

, both belonging to the Central Flores subgroup. Typologically, it is an

isolating language Social isolation, Isolation is the near or complete lack of social contact by an individual. Isolation or isolated may also refer to: Sociology and psychology *Social isolation *Isolation (psychology), a defense mechanism in psychoanalytic theo ...

. Like other Central Flores languages, it uses elements of a base-5 numeral system, possibly exhibiting the influence of a hypothetical Papuan

linguistic substratum In linguistics, a stratum (Latin for 'layer') or strate is a historical layer of language that influences or is influenced by another language through contact. The notion of "strata" was first developed by the Italian linguist Graziadio Isaia A ...

. When written, it is spelled with Indonesian-like orthographic conventions. Digraphs such as ''zh'', ''dh'' and ''bh'' are used to record sounds specific to this language.

References

Bibliography

* Sumba languages Languages of Indonesia {{au-lang-stub