Sara languages

Sara
Ethnicity:	Sara people
Geographic distribution:	CAR, Chad
Linguistic classification:	Nilo-Saharan? Central Sudanic Bongo–Bagirmi Sara
Subdivisions:	Ngambay Sar Sara Mbay Sara Ngam Kaba of Gore

The Sara languages comprise half a dozen Bongo–Bagirmi languages spoken mainly in southern Chad; a few are also spoken in the north of the Central African Republic. They are members of the Central Sudanic language family. Greenberg (1966) treats all varieties as dialects of a Sara language, whereas Tucker and Bryan (1966) consider the Sara to be a dialect cluster of several languages.

The most populous variety of Sara proper is Ngambay (Sara Ngambay), a major trade language of southern Chad, with about a million speakers, though Sar (Madjingay) is the lingua franca of Sarh. The Sara languages are:

Ngambay, Sar, Sara Mbay, Sara Ngam, Kabba of Gore.

Laka and Dagba may be additional languages, or dialects of Ngambay and Kabba, respectively.

The terms "Sara", "Kaba", and "Kaba Sara" are generic and often interchangeable, and do not always correspond to the Sara and Kaba languages. For example, Kabba and Laka Kabba (Laka) are Sara languages, whereas Sara Dunjo and Ta Sara are Kaba (Sara Kaba) languages.

Ethnologue 16 lists Bedjond, Mango, Gor, and Gulay as Sara, but the first three are varieties of the Doba language, a separate branch of Bongo–Bagirmi, and the last is a Bagirmi language (Blench ms).

References

• Roger Blench
• Greenberg, Joseph H. (1966) The Languages of Africa (2nd ed. with additions and corrections). Bloomington: Indiana University.
• Tucker, A.N. and M.A. Bryan (1966) Linguistic Analyses: The Non-Bantu Languages of North-Eastern Africa. Published for the International African Institute. London/New York/Cape Town: Oxford University Press.

External links

• Ethnologue Ethnologue report for language code: mwm
• PanAfriL10n page on Sara