Maba (Maban, Mabang) is a

Maban Maban, mabain or mabanba is a material that is held to be magical in Australian Aboriginal mythology. It is the material from which the shamans and elders of indigenous Australia supposedly derive their magical powers. Among the Ngaanyatjarra pe ...

language spoken in

Chad Chad (; ar, تشاد , ; french: Tchad, ), officially the Republic of Chad, '; ) is a landlocked country at the crossroads of North and Central Africa. It is bordered by Libya to the north, Sudan to the east, the Central African Republic ...

and

Sudan Sudan ( or ; ar, السودان, as-Sūdān, officially the Republic of the Sudan ( ar, جمهورية السودان, link=no, Jumhūriyyat as-Sūdān), is a country in Northeast Africa. It shares borders with the Central African Republic t ...

. It is divided into several dialects, and serves as a local

trade language A lingua franca (; ; for plurals see ), also known as a bridge language, common language, trade language, auxiliary language, vehicular language, or link language, is a language systematically used to make communication possible between groups ...

. Maba is closely related to the

Masalit language Masalit (autonym ''Masala/Masara'', ) is a language spoken by the Masalit people in western Darfur, Sudan. Masalit, known as the ''Massalat'' moved west into central-eastern Chad. Their ethnic population in Chad was as of the 1993 census, but ...

Phonology

Vowels

* /ɛ, ɛː/ and /ɔ, ɔː/ may be realized as more close

, eː The comma is a punctuation mark that appears in several variants in different languages. It has the same shape as an apostrophe or single closing quotation mark () in many typefaces, but it differs from them in being placed on the baseline ...

and , oː when found in open syllable positions. * Vowels may also be marginally realized as nasal when in nasal environments. *

Consonants

* Stop sounds /b, t, k/ are heard as unreleased ̚, t̚, k̚when in word-final position. * Sounds , hare heard mostly as a result of loanwords. is also mostly from Arabic loanwords, but also may occur in some native words as well. * /t, d, ⁿd/ when preceding a tap /ɾ/, are then heard as retroflex �, ɖ, ᶯɖ * /ɾ/ may also be heard as a trill in free variation.

Phonology

Vowels

Consonants

References

Further reading