Ponosakan language

Ponosakan is a moribund Austronesian language spoken in the vicinity of the district of, Southeast Minahasa, North Sulawesi, Indonesia. This language is almost extinct, with only four fluent speakers left as of November 2014.
However, a decade later in November 2024, according to BBC News Indonesia, only three fluent speakers of Ponosakan are left, namely Erfie Liu, Rohana Nou, and Wasila Pua. Because of this, the local government has attempted to prevent its extinction by teaching it at elementary schools since 2024.

Classification

The locals in North Sulawesi often falsely identify Ponosakan as a Minahasan language, due to the ethnic group's self-identification as a subgroup of Minahasan people. However, there is no doubt among scholars that this language actually belongs to the Gorontalo–Mongondow subgroup. The Gorontalo–Mongondow languages are commonly classified as a part of the Philippine subfamily; Robert Blust specifically includes it in the Central Philippine languages|Greater Central Philippine] languages, alongside—among others—Tagalog and Visayan languages.
In comparison to other Gorontalo–Mongondow languages, Ponosakan is relatively conservative in terms of phonology and structure.

Demography and distribution

Ponosakan is spoken at the eastern end of Gorontalo–Mongondow languages' distribution. This language has been spoken by the Ponosakan people in and around from at least the 17th century. Before World War II, Ponosakan was the most spoken language not only in Belang, but also in several other settlements around it. But even in the 1920s, its number of speakers was already in decline. Influx of migrants from other areas also altered the region's demography; when World War II started, already half of Belang residents were newcomers who did not speak Ponosakan. By the second half of the 20th century, "virtually no ethnic Ponosakans were learning the language anymore".
In November 2014, there were reportedly only four elderly people who could still speak Ponosakan fluently. Ponosakan has the fewest speakers among the Gorontalo–Mongondow languages.

Phonology

There are 16 consonants and 5 vowels in Ponosakan. In addition, the phoneme only occurs in loanwords.
Consonants,, emerged from intervocalic and word-final lenition of earlier *b, *Cd, and *g. This type of lenition is still synchronic in Ponosakan: bohoyan "give ", but mowohoy "give "; dalom "depth", but moralom "deep". The lenited result of word-internal *d is less predictable though, as it became either and . Similar to Mongondow, the Ponosakan /l/ has the allophone retroflex /ɭ/, which is usually pronounced when adjacent to the front vowels /e/, /i/, /a/, and /u/. However, due to the adjacency of both phonemes and the influence of Manado Malay usage since childhood, both letters might have undergone a phonemic merger, though older people can still barely retain the distinction.

	Front	Central	Back
Closed
Mid
Open

In word-final positions, and go silent and leave compensatory lengthening on the vowels.

Agent focus	mohanggel	mohisoh
Object focus	anggelon	isohon
Meaning

Alongside this, there are isolated instances of long aa on words such as ginaa and bulaan, which came from earlier sequences *-awa-.

Grammar

Pronouns

As with other Philippine languages, pronouns in Ponosakan are distinguished by case ; number ; and, for the first person plural pronouns, clusivity. Other than the contrast between the singular and plural forms, Ponosakan also exhibits "count forms" for second and third person pronouns. These forms are always followed by a number, as in siyatolu 'the three of them' and siya'opat 'the four of them'. In contrast, plural forms cannot be followed by a number. Both the count and plural forms can be used to represent any number of people, although there is a preference towards using the count forms for smaller numbers.

Case markers

There are three cases in Ponosakan: nominative, genitive, and oblique. Each case has its own marker, although the same marker is used for both nominative and genitive cases in common nouns.

Demonstratives

There are three root words for demonstratives in Ponosakan: na’a 'near speaker ', niyon 'near addressee ', and tain or makota/takota 'far from both speaker and addressee'. Examples of usage:

Interrogatives

There are at least 16 interrogative words in Ponosakan. Most of them contain one of the following three roots: -onu, -onda, and -ʔene. The form -onu by itself means 'what', but this root form can also be found in mo’onu 'when', mongonu 'why', songonu 'how much', and kosongonu 'how many times'. The form -onda when used in isolation means 'where', but this base can also be found in ko’onda 'where', na’onda 'how ', and ta’onda 'which'. The base -ʔene is prefixed with case markers for personal names to form personal interrogatives : si’ene 'who ', i’ene 'who ', and ki’ene 'to whom '; or, for the plural forms, say’ene, nay’ene, and konay’ene. The only interrogative word which doesn't show any of the above base forms is oyo 'why'.

Negators

in Ponosakan is found in several forms. The word deya' 'no' negates verbs, adjectives, existence or location. The word dika 'don't!' is used to negate commands. The word di’iman 'not' negates nouns and equational sentences. There are also doi’ which means 'don't like, doesn't like' and ta’awe which means 'I don't know'.