Native to Indonesia Native speakers ca. 65,000 (1994–1995) | Region Flores | |
Language family Austronesian
Malayo-Polynesian
Nuclear MP
Central–Eastern MP
Sumba–Flores
Ende–Manggarai
Central Flores
Ngadha–So'a
Ngadha ISO 639-3 Either:
nxg – Ngad'a
nea – Eastern Ngad'a Glottolog ngad1261 (Ngad'a)
east2464 (Eastern Ngad'a) | ||
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. 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).
Ngadha is the only language reported to have a retroflex implosive /ᶑ /.
Ngadha is "bizarre" because it has no prefixes nor suffixes at all. This "strangely streamlined language" is thought by linguist John McWhorter to have originated when "little people" were "subjugated" into the Austronesian population. McWhorter (2006) speculates this rare linguistic transformation would have occurred to the ancestor of Ngadha and the related Keo and Rongga languages. 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.