Social:Ngasa language
| Ngasa | |
|---|---|
| Ongamo | |
| Native to | Tanzania |
| Ethnicity | Ngasa people |
Native speakers | ? (2014)[1] |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | nsg |
| Glottolog | ngas1238[2] |
Ongamo, or Ngasa, 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 eleusine by the Ngasa. Subsequent immigration of Bantu-speaking Chagga over the next five centuries considerably reduced the extent and viability of the Ngasa language.[3]
References
- ↑ Ngara, Carolyne (2014-01-01). "AN ENCOUNTER WITH EXTINCTION: A CASE FOR THE PRESERVATION OF THE DIMINISHING NGASA LANGUAGE OF EASTERN KILIMANJARO IN TANZANIA.". C.Ngara. https://www.academia.edu/8389416/AN_ENCOUNTER_WITH_EXTINCTION_A_CASE_FOR_THE_PRESERVATION_OF_THE_DIMINISHING_NGASA_LANGUAGE_OF_EASTERN_KILIMANJARO_IN_TANZANIA.
- ↑ 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.
- ↑ 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
Template:Languages of Tanzania
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