| Ngambay | |
|---|---|
| Spoken in | Chad, Cameroon, Nigeria |
| Ethnicity | Sara Gambai |
| Native speakers | 900,000 in Chad (2006) plus 50,000 Laka |
| Language family | |
| Writing system | Latin |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | either: sba – Ngambay lap – Laka (Kabba Laka) |
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 mutually intelligible with Laka, which is sometimes considered a dialect.
Ngambay has SVO word order.[1] Suffixes indicate case.[1] There is no tense; Tense is indicated by a perfective–imperfective distinction.[1] Modifiers follow nouns.[1] The numeral system is decimal, but eight and nine are expressed as 10-minus-two and 10-minus-one.[2] It is a tone language with three tones, high, mid and low.[3] There are loan words from both Arabic and French.[3]