Mbay language : Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Mbay language

Central Sudanic language spoken in Central Africa

Mbay
Sara Mbay
Native to	Chad, Central African Republic
Native speakers	(90,000 cited 1990–1996)^[1]
Language family	Nilo-Saharan? Central Sudanic Bongo–Bagirmi Sara languages East Mbay
Language codes
ISO 639-3	`myb`
Glottolog	`mbay1241`

Mbay, or Sara Mbay, is a Bongo–Bagirmi language of Chad and the Central African Republic.

It is reported that Mbay does not have independent personal pronouns. The meaning is largely carried out by subject, object, and possessive affixes attached to verbs, prepositions, and nouns. Other words, such as yá̰a̰ "thing", dèē "person", tàa "speech", and lòo "place" are used somewhat pronominally as something, somebody, something said, and somewhere.^[2]

References

The Sara-Bagirmi Language Project -- Mbay

^ Mbay at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
^ Keegan, John M. 1997. A Reference Grammar of Mbay. Munich: Lincom Europa. Cited in Bhat, D.N.S. 2004. Pronouns. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 26