Social:Ngasa language

From HandWiki
Short description: Eastern Nilotic language
Ngas
Ongamo
Native toTanzania
EthnicityNgasa people
Extinct2012[1]
Nilo-Saharan?
Language codes
ISO 639-3nsg
Glottologngas1238[2]

Ongamo, or Ngas, is an extinct Eastern Nilotic language of Tanzania. It is closely related to the Maa languages, but more distantly than they are to each other. Ongamo has 60% of lexical similarity with Maasai, Samburu, and Camus. Speakers have shifted to Chagga, a dominant regional Bantu language.

History

An expansion of Ngasa speakers onto the plains north of Mount Kilimanjaro occurred in the 12th century. The language was mutually intelligible with Proto-Maasai during that period. Vocabulary retention from this time attests to the cultivation of sorghum and elusine by the Ngas. Subsequent immigration of Bantu-speaking Chagga over the next five centuries considerably reduced the extent and viability of the Ngasa language.[3]

References

  1. "Ngasa". https://www.ethnologue.com/language/nsg/. 
  2. Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds (2017). "Ngasa". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History. http://glottolog.org/resource/languoid/id/ngas1238. 
  3. Leeman, Bernard and informants. (1994). 'Ongamoi (KiNgassa): a Nilotic remnant of Kilimanjaro'. Cymru UK: Cyhoeddwr Joseph Biddulph Publisher. 20pp.

Further reading

  • Sommer, Gabriele (1992) 'A Survey on Language Death in Africa', in Brenzinger, Matthias (ed.) Language Death: Factual and Theoretical Explorations with Special Reference to East Africa. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 301–417.

External links

Ngasa profile on the Endangered Languages Project