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[2]

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.[3] Suffixes indicate case.[3] There is no tense; aspect is indicated by a perfective–imperfective distinction.[3] Modifiers follow nouns.[3] The numeral system is decimal, but eight and nine are expressed as 10-minus-two and 10-minus-one.[4] It is a tone language with three tones, high, mid and low.[5] There are loan words from both Arabic and French.[5]

References

  1. ↑ Ngambay at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
  2. ↑ Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin; Bank, Sebastian, eds. (2016). "Ngambay". Glottolog 2.7. Jena: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
  3. 1 2 3 4 The World Atlas of Language Structures Online: Ngambay. Accessed November, 2008.
  4. ↑ Numeral Systems of the World's Languages: Ngambay. Department of Linguistics, Max Planck Institute, Leipzig. Accessed November, 2008.
  5. 1 2 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.


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