Ngasa language

Ongamo
Ngasa
Spoken in	Tanzania
Ethnicity	Ngasa people
Native speakers	extinct  (date missing)
Language family	Nilo-Saharan? Eastern Saharan Eastern Nilotic Lotuxo–Teso Lotuxo–Maa Maa Ongamo
Language codes
ISO 639-3	nsg

Ongamo, or Ngasa, is an endangered or extinct Eastern Nilotic language of the Ngasa people of Tanzania. It is related to the Maa languages, but it is more distantly related to them than the Maa languages are to each other. Ongamo has 60% of lexical similarity with Maasai, 59% with Samburu, 58% with Camus. Many of its speakers have shifted to Chagga, a dominant regional Bantu language.

References

• Sommer, Gabriele (1992) 'A survey on language death in Africa', in Brenzinger, Matthias (ed.) Language Death: Factual and Theoretical Explorations with Special Reference to East Africa. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 301–417.