Ngbaka (''Ngbà kà '') is a
Gbaya language spoken by just over a million people in the
Democratic Republic of the Congo
The Democratic Republic of the Congo (french: République démocratique du Congo (RDC), colloquially "La RDC" ), informally Congo-Kinshasa, DR Congo, the DRC, the DROC, or the Congo, and formerly and also colloquially Zaire, is a country in ...
. It is a regionally important language, used by the
Gilima,
Ngbundu,
Mbandja and
Mono people
The Mono ( ) are a Native American people who traditionally live in the central Sierra Nevada, the Eastern Sierra (generally south of Bridgeport), the Mono Basin, and adjacent areas of the Great Basin. The Eastern mono is often grouped under t ...
s, and is taught in primary schools; 10% are literate in Ngbaka.
''Ngbaka'' is a common local ethnic name; the language may be distinguished from other languages called "Ngbaka" as Ngbaka Gbaya or Ngbaka Minagende.
There are no significant dialectal differences within Ngbaka, and it may be
mutually intelligible with members of the
Manza dialect cluster.
Phonology
Consonants
* The trill /r/ mainly occurs in ideophones, in both initial and final position. When it occurs in loanwords, it is often pronounced as a lateral
* The glottal stop /Ê”/ mostly occurs before word-initial vowels.
* Sounds /Å‹Í¡m, Ê”, h, w/, do not appear in intervocalic position.
* /Å‹/ does not appear in word-initial position
* The fricative /f/ can be pronounced in the western dialects as a voiceless stop
* The voiceless stop /k/ can be pronounced as a voiced stop
¡in the western dialects.
Vowels
Writing system
Nasalisation is indicated with a
tilde
The tilde () or , is a grapheme with several uses. The name of the character came into English from Spanish, which in turn came from the Latin '' titulus'', meaning "title" or "superscription". Its primary use is as a diacritic (accent) i ...
 on the vowel : .
Les tons des syllables sont indiqués avec des diacritiques lorsqu’il y a ambigüité :
* the high tone is indicated with the
acute accent :  ;
* the low tone is indicated with the
grave accent  :  ;
* the following tones are not usually indicated in the spelling but may be indicated in some linguistic works :
** the medium tone with the vertical line above :  ;
** the falling tone with the circumflex accent :  ;
** the rising tone with the caron/hacek : .
References
External links
Ngbaka at Ghent University
{{Authority control
Gbaya languages
Languages of the Democratic Republic of the Congo