Ongamo, orNgas, is an extinctEastern Nilotic language ofTanzania. It is closely related to theMaa languages, but more distantly than they are to each other. Ongamo has 60% of lexical similarity withMaasai,Samburu, andCamus. Speakers have shifted toChagga, a dominant regionalBantu language.

An expansion of Ngasa speakers onto the plains north of Mount Kilimanjaro occurred in the 12th century. The language was mutually intelligible with Proto-Maasai during that period. Vocabulary retention from this time attests to the cultivation of sorghum and eleusine by the Ngas. Subsequent immigration of Bantu-speaking Chagga over the next five centuries considerably reduced the extent and viability of the Ngasa language.^[2]

• Sommer, Gabriele (1992) 'A Survey on Language Death in Africa', in Brenzinger, Matthias (ed.)Language Death: Factual and Theoretical Explorations with Special Reference to East Africa. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 301–417.

• Ngasa profile on the Endangered Languages ProjectArchived 2024-12-22 at theWayback Machine

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