Mpadə is an

Afro-Asiatic The Afroasiatic languages (or Afro-Asiatic), also known as Hamito-Semitic, or Semito-Hamitic, and sometimes also as Afrasian, Erythraean or Lisramic, are a language family of about 300 languages that are spoken predominantly in the geographic ...

language spoken in northern

Cameroon Cameroon (; french: Cameroun, ff, Kamerun), officially the Republic of Cameroon (french: République du Cameroun, links=no), is a country in west- central Africa. It is bordered by Nigeria to the west and north; Chad to the northeast; th ...

and southwestern

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 Repub ...

. Dialects are Bodo, Digam, Mpade (Makari), Shoe (Shewe), and Woulki. The language is sometimes known as Makari, after one of the towns where it is spoken. Ngala further west (as described by Barth) once spoke a dialect similar to Makari, but it was moribund by the 1920s, the people having shifted to Kanuri.

Distribution

In Cameroon, Mpade is spoken throughout the northern end of the

Logone-et-Chari Logone-et-Chari is a department of Extreme-Nord Province in Cameroon. The department covers an area of 12,133 km and at the 2005 Census had a total population of 486,997. The capital of the department is at Kousséri. Most inhabitants of ...

department (Far North Region), adjacent to

Lake Chad Lake Chad (french: Lac Tchad) is a historically large, shallow, endorheic lake in Central Africa, which has varied in size over the centuries. According to the ''Global Resource Information Database'' of the United Nations Environment Programme ...

and centered on Makari (the northern part of Makari arrondissement as well as in Fotokol and Hilé Alifa arrondissements, and the northern part of Goulfey arrondissement). It is also spoken in Chad and Nigeria, it has a total population of 12,000 speakers (SIL 2000).

Phonology

Consonants

Mpade has the following consonants.Allison 2006.

Vowels

Mpade has the following vowels.

Notes

References

* Allison, Sean. 2006. Alphabet et orthographe de Kotoko de Makary (mpadɨ) (Makary Kotoko Orthography Statement) SIL manuscript, 31 pp
Available on-line
* Allison, Sean. 2020. A Grammar of Makary Kotoko. Leiden: Brill. . {{DEFAULTSORT:Mpade Language Biu-Mandara languages Languages of Chad Languages of Cameroon