Ponosakan is spoken at the eastern end of Gorontalo–Mongondow languages' distribution. This language has been spoken by the Ponosakan people in and around Belang 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 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.
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.
Nominative
Genitive
Oblique
Common
in
in
kon
Personal,
si
i
ki/kongki
Personal,
say
nay
konay
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’.
