Ngambay language
| Ngambay | |
|---|---|
| Native to | Chad, Cameroon, Nigeria |
| Ethnicity | Sara |
Native speakers | 950,000 (2005–2006)[1] |
| Latin | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | sba |
| Glottolog | ngam1268 |
Ngambay (also known as Sara, Sara Ngambai, Gamba, Gambaye, Gamblai and Ngambai) is one of the major languages spoken by Sara people in southwestern Chad, northeastern Cameroon and eastern Nigeria, with about a million native speakers. Ngambay is the most widely spoken of the Sara languages, and is used as a trade language between speakers of other dialects.
Ngambay has SVO word order.[2] Suffixes indicate case.[2] There is no tense; aspect is indicated by a perfective–imperfective distinction.[2] Modifiers follow nouns.[2] The numeral system is decimal, but eight and nine are expressed as 10-minus-two and 10-minus-one.[3] It is a tone language with three tones, high, mid and low.[4] There are loan words from both Arabic and French.[4]
Phonology
Consonants
| Labial | Dental | Alveolar | Palatal | Labial- velar |
Velar | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plosive | voiceless | p | t | k | |||
| voiced | b | d | dʒ | ɡ | |||
| implosive | ɓ | ɗ | |||||
| prenasalized | mb | nd | nd͡ʒ | ŋɡ | |||
| Fricative | s | ||||||
| Nasal | m | n | ɲ | ||||
| Trill/Flap | ⱱ | r | |||||
| Lateral | l | ||||||
| Approximant | j | w | |||||
Vowels/Nasals
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Close | i ĩ | u ũ | |
| Close-mid | ɛ ɛ̃ | ə | o õ |
| Open-mid | ɔ ɔ̃ | ||
| Open | a ã |
Vowels can be accented or nasalised. Diacritics and accents include high /á/, mid /ā/, low /à/, and nasalised /ã/.[5]
References
- ^ Ngambay at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
- ^ a b c d The World Atlas of Language Structures Online: Ngambay. Accessed November, 2008.
- ^ Numeral Systems of the World's Languages: Ngambay. Department of Linguistics, Max Planck Institute, Leipzig. Accessed November, 2008.
- ^ a b 50 Lessons in Sara-Ngambay, Volume 1., by Linda J. Thayer, James E. Thayer, Noé Kyambé and Adoum Eloi Gondjé. Indiana University, 1971. Accessed November 2008.
- ^ Sarah Moeller, Mekoulnodji Ndjerareou, Christy Melick (2010). A Brief Grammatical Sketch of Ngambay (PDF).
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
External links
Definitions from Wiktionary
Media from Commons
News from Wikinews
Quotations from Wikiquote
Texts from Wikisource
Textbooks from Wikibooks
Resources from Wikiversity
| National | |
|---|---|
| Other | |
 | This Chad-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |