Ethnicity Sara Writing system Latin | Native speakers 950,000 (2005–2006) ISO 639-3 sba | |
Native to Chad, Cameroon, Nigeria Language family Nilo-Saharan?
Central Sudanic
Bongo–Bagirmi
Sara languages
West
Ngambay | ||
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. Suffixes indicate case. There is no tense; aspect is indicated by a perfective–imperfective distinction. Modifiers follow nouns. The numeral system is decimal, but eight and nine are expressed as 10-minus-two and 10-minus-one. It is a tone language with three tones, high, mid and low. There are loan words from both Arabic and French.
Phonology
Consonants
Vowels
Vowels can be accented or nasalized. Diacritics and accents include high /á/, mid /ā/, low /à/, and nasalized /ã/.