Gaam (Gaahmg), also known as Ingessana, ''(Me/Mun)Tabi'', ''Kamanidi'', or ''Mamedja/Mamidza'', is an

Eastern Sudanic language In most classifications, the Eastern Sudanic languages are a group of nine families of languages that may constitute a branch of the Nilo-Saharan language family. Eastern Sudanic languages are spoken from southern Egypt to northern Tanzania. N ...

spoken by the

Ingessana people Ingessana (Gaahmg, Tabi) are the members of an African ethnic group of Sudan who speak the Gaam language. They live around the Tabi Hills, southwest of Ad-Damazin and northwest of Kurmuk in the Blue Nile Province. The capital of the Ingessa ...

in the Tabi Hills in eastern Sudan, near

Ethiopia Ethiopia, , om, Itiyoophiyaa, so, Itoobiya, ti, ኢትዮጵያ, Ítiyop'iya, aa, Itiyoppiya officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country in the Horn of Africa. It shares borders with Eritrea to the Er ...

. It was considered an isolate within Eastern Sudanic until the other

Eastern Jebel languages The Eastern Jebel languages are a small subfamily belonging to the Eastern Sudanic subgroup of Nilo-Saharan. They are spoken in the hills of An Nil al Azraq province in eastern Sudan (the name "Jebel" is simply Arabic for "mountain".) Languages ...

were discovered in the late 20th century. Dialects are ''Soda (Tao), Kukur (Gor), Kulang (Kulelek, Bau), Buwahg (Buek).'' An early record of this language is a short wordlist dated February 1883 by Juan Maria Schuver. His informant came from the east side of the Tabi Hills, but was hard to understand because he was chewing tobacco.

Phonology

Consonants

There are 21 distinct consonant phonemes. The

fricative A fricative is a consonant manner of articulation, produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two Place of articulation, articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the ba ...

, nasal,

lateral Lateral is a geometric term of location which may refer to: Healthcare *Lateral (anatomy), an anatomical direction * Lateral cricoarytenoid muscle * Lateral release (surgery), a surgical procedure on the side of a kneecap Phonetics *Lateral co ...

and rhotic consonants also distinguish

length Length is a measure of distance. In the International System of Quantities, length is a quantity with dimension distance. In most systems of measurement a base unit for length is chosen, from which all other units are derived. In the Inte ...

Vowels

There are six distinct vowel phonemes. All six can also occur in sequential (and thus lengthened) form but may change phonetic quality. Stirtz (2012) proposes the following system:

Tone

Gaam is a

tonal language Tone is the use of pitch in language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning – that is, to distinguish or to inflect words. All verbal languages use pitch to express emotional and other paralinguistic information and to convey emph ...

. There are three level tones, High, Mid and Low, which can be combined to form rising and falling tones. A total of nine tone melodies is possible, all of them contrastive.

References

Bibliography

* *

External links

Gaam basic lexicon at the Global Lexicostatistical Database
Eastern Jebel languages {{ns-lang-stub