Ngurimi (Ngoreme) is a

Bantu language The Bantu languages (English: , Proto-Bantu language, Proto-Bantu: *bantʊ̀), or Ntu languages are a language family of about 600 languages of Central Africa, Central, Southern Africa, Southern, East Africa, Eastern and Southeast Africa, South ...

Tanzania Tanzania, officially the United Republic of Tanzania, is a country in East Africa within the African Great Lakes region. It is bordered by Uganda to the northwest; Kenya to the northeast; the Indian Ocean to the east; Mozambique and Malawi to t ...

. Ngoreme is spoken in the Serengeti District of the

Mara Region Mara Region (''Mkoa wa Mara'' in Swahili) is one of Tanzania's 31 administrative regions. The region covers an area of . The region is comparable in size to the combined land area of the nation state of El Salvador. for El Salvador at The nei ...

of north-west Tanzania by some 55,000 people.Hill, Dustin, Anna-Lena Lindfors, Louise Nagler, Mark Woodward, and Richard Yalonde. 2007. A Sociolinguistic survey of the Bantu languages in Mara Region, Tanzania . Dar es Salaam: SIL International. There are two main dialects of Ngoreme - a northern dialect and a southern dialect - which maintain mutual intelligibility.

Phonology

Ngoreme shares a vowel inventory with the majority of the Mara languages: ''/i e ɛ a ɔ o u/''. However, Ngoreme has an asymmetrical vowel inventory, with 7 phonemic vowels in nouns but only 5 vowels (/i ɛ a ɔ u/) in verbs.

Nominal system

In common with many

Bantu languages The Bantu languages (English: , Proto-Bantu language, Proto-Bantu: *bantʊ̀), or Ntu languages are a language family of about 600 languages of Central Africa, Central, Southern Africa, Southern, East Africa, Eastern and Southeast Africa, South ...

, Ngoreme nouns typically consist of a noun stem, a noun class prefix and an augment (or pre-prefix) vowel. Augment vowels are invariable but the vowels that occurs in the noun class prefixes commonly exhibit variant forms as determined by vowel harmony. Ngoreme has 19 noun classes, with the classes 1-10 exhibiting regular singular/plural pairings, class 11 is attested, as is class 12 which contains

diminutive A diminutive is a word obtained by modifying a root word to convey a slighter degree of its root meaning, either to convey the smallness of the object or quality named, or to convey a sense of intimacy or endearment, and sometimes to belittle s ...

s, class 14 is also found. Class 15 contains verb nouns (or infinitives), class 16, 17 and 18 are also attested and are the locative classes. Class 19 is the plural diminutive class whilst class 20 is a (singular)

augmentative An augmentative (abbreviated ) is a morphological form of a word which expresses greater intensity, often in size but also in other attributes. It is the opposite of a diminutive. Overaugmenting something often makes it grotesque and so in so ...

class.

References

Languages of Tanzania Great Lakes Bantu languages {{Bantu-lang-stub