Ngambay (also known as Sara, Sara Ngambai, Gamba, Gambaye, Gamblai and Ngambai) is one of the major languages spoken by

Sara people The Sara people, sometimes referred to as the Kaba or Sara-Kaba, are a Central Sudanic ethnic group native to southern Chad, the northwestern areas of the Central African Republic, and the southern border of South Sudan. They speak the Sara langua ...

in southwestern

Chad Chad, officially the Republic of Chad, is a landlocked country at the crossroads of North Africa, North and Central Africa. It is bordered by Libya to Chad–Libya border, the north, Sudan to Chad–Sudan border, the east, the Central Afric ...

, northeastern

Cameroon Cameroon, officially the Republic of Cameroon, is a country in Central Africa. It shares boundaries with Nigeria to the west and north, Chad to the northeast, the Central African Republic to the east, and Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, and the R ...

and eastern

Nigeria Nigeria, officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a country in West Africa. It is situated between the Sahel to the north and the Gulf of Guinea in the Atlantic Ocean to the south. It covers an area of . With Demographics of Nigeria, ...

, with about a million native speakers. Ngambay is the most widely spoken of the

Sara languages The Sara languages comprise over a dozen Bongo–Bagirmi languages spoken mainly in Chad; a few are also spoken in the north of the Central African Republic. They are members of the Central Sudanic language family. Greenberg (1966) treats all vari ...

, and is used as a trade language between speakers of other dialects. It is spoken by the Sara Gambai people. Ngambay has

Subject–Verb–Object word order In linguistic typology, subject–verb–object (SVO) is a sentence structure where the subject comes first, the verb second, and the object third. Languages may be classified according to the dominant sequence of these elements in unmarked sen ...

.The World Atlas of Language Structures Online: Ngambay
Accessed November, 2008. Suffixes indicate

case Case or CASE may refer to: Instances * Instantiation (disambiguation), a realization of a concept, theme, or design * Special case, an instance that differs in a certain way from others of the type Containers * Case (goods), a package of relate ...

. There is no tense; aspect is indicated by a perfective–imperfective distinction. Modifiers follow nouns. The

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 digits or other symbols in a consistent manner. The same sequence of symbols may represent differe ...

is decimal, but eight and nine are expressed as 10-minus-two and 10-minus-one. It is a

tone language Tone is the use of pitch in language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning—that is, to distinguish or to inflect words. All oral languages use pitch to express emotional and other para-linguistic information and to convey emphasis ...

with three tones: high, mid, and low.50 Lessons in Sara-Ngambay, Volume 1.
by Linda J. Thayer, James E. Thayer, Noé Kyambé and Adoum Eloi Gondjé. Indiana University, 1971. Accessed November 2008. There are

loan words A loanword (also a loan word, loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language (the recipient or target language), through the process of borrowing. Borrowing is a metaphorical term t ...

from both

Arabic Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns lang ...

and French.

Phonology

Consonants

Vowels/Nasal Vowels

Tones & Nasalization

The three tones are high /á/, mid /ā/ and low /à/. Vowels can also be nasalised: /ã/.

References

External links

The Sara-Bagirmi Language Project – Ngambay
Languages of Chad Bongo–Bagirmi languages Languages of Cameroon Languages of Nigeria Subject–verb–object languages Tonal languages {{ns-lang-stub