Nizaa language
| Nizaa | |
|---|---|
| Galim, Nyemnyem, Nyamnyam, Suga | |
| Native to | Cameroon |
| Region | Adamawa Region |
Native speakers | (10,000 cited 1985) |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | sgi |
| Glottolog | suga1248 |
Map of the Mambiloid languages of northern Cameroon and southeastern Nigeria, with the Nizaa language in yellow | |
Nizaa (Nizaa pronunciation: [nɪ˦zʌː˧˨]), also known as Galim, Nyemnyem, Nyamnyam, and Suga, is an endangered Mambiloid language spoken in the Adamawa Region of northern Cameroon. Most of the language's speakers live in and around the village of Galim, in the department of Faro-et-Déo.
Nizaa has a complex phonetic inventory consisting of 65 consonant phonemes as well as numerous tones; in terms of grammar, it preserves verbal morphology much more than is typical for the Mambiloid languages. Nizaa was first extensively studied and documented in the 1990s, by Norwegian linguists Rolf Theil Endresen and Bjørghild Kjelsvik. The language is currently endangered, but the exact number of active speakers is unknown; the last census of speakers took place in 1985.