Naba is a
Nilo-Saharan language
The Nilo-Saharan languages are a proposed family of around 210 African languages spoken by somewhere around 70 million speakers, mainly in the upper parts of the Chari and Nile rivers, including historic Nubia, north of where the two tributarie ...
spoken by approximately 500,000 people in
Chad
Chad, officially the Republic of Chad, is a landlocked country at the crossroads of North Africa, North and Central Africa. It is bordered by Libya to Chad–Libya border, the north, Sudan to Chad–Sudan border, the east, the Central Afric ...
.
[ Those who speak this language are called Lisi, a collective name for three closely associated ethnic groups, the Bilala, the Kuka and the Medogo, that represent the three dialects in which Naba is subdivided. They live mainly in the Batha Prefecture, but the Kuka also reside in Chari-Baguirmi. '']Ethnologue
''Ethnologue: Languages of the World'' is an annual reference publication in print and online that provides statistics and other information on the living languages of the world. It is the world's most comprehensive catalogue of languages. It w ...
'' estimates the lexical similarity among the three dialects to be no less than 99%.[ ]Arabic
Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns lang ...
is often spoken as a second language.[
]
Phonology
Consonants
* can also be heard as in initial position, in free variation.
* can also be heard as when in intervocalic positions.
* Affricate sounds are heard as palatal stop sounds when affected by fortition in pre-consonantal positions.
* may be heard as approximants in intervocalic positions. It may also be pronounced as a uvular trill when before back vowels in intervocalic positions.
Vowels
* Vowels have allophones when in closed syllables.
* A central may be heard in fast speech and in vowel epenthesis.
References
External links
A paper on an aspect of Bilala
Languages of Chad
Bongo–Bagirmi languages
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