Gants (rhymes with haunch or, in British English, branch) is spoken in the Schrader Rane of southwest Madang. The population was estimated at 3,000 speakers in the 1970's, but it's probably more today.
Gants belongs to the Sogeram branch of the Madang family, which is itself part of the huge Trans New Guinea family. It's an interesting Sogeram language because it's the only member of the family that's in the highlands--all the other Sogeram languages are spoken in the lowlands. Even more interesting, its closest relative, Kursav, is spoken far away, forty miles up the Ramu River. I wrote a paper about this, since lots of people had been assuming Gants was related to other highlands languages like Kalam.
Sadly, I was never able to visit Gants country, but I did work with two wonderful Gants consultants in Madang town in 2012. We made some recordings, which you can listen to at PARADISEC. A few other people have worked in this community over the years, including Heinrich Aufenanger, a Catholic missionary active until the sixties, and Patricia Johnson and James Wood, a pair of (now retired) anthropologists at Penn State.
Gants belongs to the Sogeram branch of the Madang family, which is itself part of the huge Trans New Guinea family. It's an interesting Sogeram language because it's the only member of the family that's in the highlands--all the other Sogeram languages are spoken in the lowlands. Even more interesting, its closest relative, Kursav, is spoken far away, forty miles up the Ramu River. I wrote a paper about this, since lots of people had been assuming Gants was related to other highlands languages like Kalam.
Sadly, I was never able to visit Gants country, but I did work with two wonderful Gants consultants in Madang town in 2012. We made some recordings, which you can listen to at PARADISEC. A few other people have worked in this community over the years, including Heinrich Aufenanger, a Catholic missionary active until the sixties, and Patricia Johnson and James Wood, a pair of (now retired) anthropologists at Penn State.