Tama language
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Tama, or Tamongobo, is the primary language spoken by the Tama people in Ouaddai, eastern Chad and in Darfur, western Sudan.<ref name="Appiah">Template:Cite book</ref> It is a Taman language which belongs to the Eastern Sudanic branch of the Nilo-Saharan language family. Miisiirii is often considered a dialect, though it is not particularly close.
Demographics
Tama is spoken by 63,000 people in Dar Tama, a well irrigated area near Guéréda that extends from Kebkebiya village to nearby Sudan. There are two nearly identical dialects, one spoken in the northern and central areas, and another one spoken in the south.<ref>Rilly, Claude. 2010. Le méroïtique et sa famille linguistique. Leuven: Peeters Publishers. Template:ISBN</ref>
Phonology
Consonants
| Labial | Dental | Alveolar | Retroflex | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stop | Template:Small | t̪ | k | |||||
| Template:Small | b | d̪ | ɟ | g | ||||
| Template:Small | ɓ | ɗ̪ | ||||||
| Fricative | f | s | ʃ | h | ||||
| Nasal | m | n | ɲ | ŋ | ||||
| Rhotic | r | ɽ | ||||||
| Lateral | l | ɭ | ||||||
| Approximant | w | j | ||||||
Vowels
| +ATR | -ATR | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Front | Central | Back | Front | Central | Back | |
| Close | i | u | ɪ | ʊ | ||
| Mid | e | o | ɛ | ɔ | ||
| Open | ʌ̈ | a | ||||
Vowel length is also distinctive.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>