Ngambay language
Encyclopedia
Ngambay 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. Suffixes indicate case
. There is no tense
; Tense
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
.
Sara people
The Sara are an ethnic group in Central Africa, who reside mostly in Chad, making up approximatively 30% of its southern population.-In Chad:...
in southwestern Chad
Chad
Chad , officially known as the Republic of Chad, is a landlocked country in Central Africa. It is bordered by Libya to the north, Sudan to the east, the Central African Republic to the south, Cameroon and Nigeria to the southwest, and Niger to the west...
, northeastern Cameroon
Cameroon
Cameroon, officially the Republic of Cameroon , is a country in west Central Africa. It is bordered by Nigeria to the west; Chad to the northeast; the Central African Republic to the east; and Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, and the Republic of the Congo to the south. Cameroon's coastline lies on the...
and eastern Nigeria
Nigeria
Nigeria , officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a federal constitutional republic comprising 36 states and its Federal Capital Territory, Abuja. The country is located in West Africa and shares land borders with the Republic of Benin in the west, Chad and Cameroon in the east, and Niger in...
, with about a million native speakers. Ngambay is the most widely-spoken of the Sara languages
Sara languages
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...
, 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. Suffixes indicate case
Grammatical case
In grammar, the case of a noun or pronoun is an inflectional form that indicates its grammatical function in a phrase, clause, or sentence. For example, a pronoun may play the role of subject , of direct object , or of possessor...
. There is no tense
Grammatical tense
A tense is a grammatical category that locates a situation in time, to indicate when the situation takes place.Bernard Comrie, Aspect, 1976:6:...
; Tense
Grammatical aspect
In linguistics, the grammatical aspect of a verb is a grammatical category that defines the temporal flow in a given action, event, or state, from the point of view of the speaker...
is indicated by a perfective–imperfective distinction
Perfective aspect
The perfective aspect , sometimes called the aoristic aspect, is a grammatical aspect used to describe a situation viewed as a simple whole, whether that situation occurs in the past, present, or future. The perfective aspect is equivalent to the aspectual component of past perfective forms...
. Modifiers follow
Word order
In linguistics, word order typology refers to the study of the order of the syntactic constituents of a language, and how different languages can employ different orders. Correlations between orders found in different syntactic subdomains are also of interest...
nouns. The numeral system
Numeral system
A numeral system is a writing system for expressing numbers, that is a mathematical notation for representing numbers of a given set, using graphemes or symbols in a consistent manner....
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
Arabic language
Arabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...
and French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
.