- Ngambay language
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Ngambay Spoken in Chad, Cameroon, Nigeria Ethnicity Sara Gambai Native speakers 900,000 in Chad (2006)
plus 50,000 LakaLanguage family Writing system Latin Language codes ISO 639-3 either:
sba – Ngambay
lap – Laka (Kabba Laka)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. It is mutually intelligible with Laka, which is sometimes considered a dialect.
Ngambay has SVO word order.[1] Suffixes indicate case.[1] There is no tense; Tense is indicated by a perfective–imperfective distinction.[1] Modifiers follow nouns.[1] The numeral system is decimal, but eight and nine are expressed as 10-minus-two and 10-minus-one.[2] It is a tone language with three tones, high, mid and low.[3] There are loan words from both Arabic and French.[3]
References
- ^ 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.
External links
- Map of Ngambay language from the LL-Map project
- Information on Ngambay language from the Multitree project
- Ethnologue entry for Ngambay
Categories:- Languages of Chad
- Bongo-Bagirmi languages
- Nilo-Saharan language stubs
- Chad stubs
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