Ngambay
Ngambay is a Central Sudanic language spoken in Nigeria, Cameroon, and Chad.
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Ngambay (also known as Sara, Sara Ngambai, Gamba, Gambaye, Gamblai and Ngambai) is one of the major languages spoken by Sara people in southwestern Chad, northeastern Cameroon and eastern Nigeria, with about a million native speakers. Ngambay is the most widely spoken of the Sara languages, 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. Suffixes indicate case. There is no tense; aspect is indicated by a perfective–imperfective distinction. Modifiers follow nouns. The numeral system is decimal, but eight and nine are expressed as 10-minus-two and 10-minus-one. It is a tone language with three tones: high, mid, and low. There are loan words from both Arabic and French.
From Wikipedia · Ngambay language · CC BY-SA 4.0
Words in Ngambay
| Meaning | Word | Romanization |
|---|---|---|
| woman | dèné | |
| name | ri* | |
| eye | k3m* | |
| ear | mbi* | |
| nose | 3m* | |
| tooth | Ngag* | |
| tongue | ndo* | |
| hand | dab3laj3* | |
| blood | m3s3* | |
| bone | siga* | |
| skin | ndar* | |
| knee | k3ji* | |
| breast | mba* | |
| water | màn | |
| fire | p3r* | |
| sun | kar* | |
| star | kEr3me* | |
| stone | jEr* | |
| tree | kag3* | |
| leaf | kam* | |
| night | londul* | |
| dog | bisi* | |
| fish | kanj3* | |
| louse | Ngisa* | |
| one | kara* | |
| two | jo* | |
| I | ma* | |
| you | i* | |
| drink | ai* | |
| see | o* |
* in the simplified ASJP transcription
Most similar languages
Vocabulary
Vocabulary compares 40 basic words (ASJP); grammar compares 195 features (Grambank). Similar is not always related.
Nearby languages
Elsewhere
Glottolog · ngam1268 · Wikipedia (English) · Ethnologue · sba