Masaba language

Masaba
Lumasaba
Spoken in	Uganda
Region	Eastern, south of the Kupsabiny, Bugisu Province
Native speakers	1,500,000  (date missing)
Language family	Niger–Congo Atlantic–Congo Benue–Congo Bantoid Bantu Northeast Bantu Great Lakes Bantu Masaba–Luhya (J.30) Masaba
Language codes
ISO 639-3	myx

Masaba (Lumasaaba), sometimes known as Gisu (Lugisu) after one of its dialects, is a Bantu language spoken by about 1,500,000 people in eastern Uganda in the administrative region of Bugisu on the border to Kenya. The language is closely related to, and mutually intelligible with Bukusu, spoken in western Kenya. Its speakers, formerly known as the Bagisu, prefer to be called Bamasaba. Masaba is the local name of Mount Elgon. Like other Bantu languages, Masaba has a large set of prefixes used as noun classifiers. This is similar to how gender is used in many Germanic and Romance languages, except that instead of the usual two or three, there are around eighteen different noun classes, most of them rather only generally defined. The language is tonal and has a quite complex verb morphology.

Sounds

Consonants

	labial		Alveolar		Palatal		Velar
Nasal	m		n				ŋ
Plosive	p	b	t	d			k	g
Fricative	f	β	s	z
Approximant			l		j

Vowels

Masaba has a basic 5-vowel system consisting of /i, e, a, o, u/.

References

• Brown, Gillian (1972) Phonological Rules and Dialectal Variation: A study of the phonology of Lumasaaba ISBN 0-521-08485-7

External links

• Masaba language at Ethnologue
• Kulomba Kwikumutikinyi Portions of the Book of Common Prayer in Masaba (1907) digitized by Richard Mammana and Charles Wohlers