Massa language
language
Massa (or Masana, Masa) is a Chadic language spoken in southern Chad and northern Cameroon by the Masa people. It has approximately 200,000 speakers.
Dialects are Bongor, Bugudum (Budugum), Domo, Gizay, Gumay, Ham, Walia, Wina (Viri), Yagwa.
Kim, a neighbouring language, was once misclassified as Masa.
Distribution
Masa is spoken in the southern part of Mayo-Danay department in the Far North Region, in the arrondissements of Yagoua, Kalfou, Wina, Yele, and Guéré.
Central Masa is spoken along the Logone River, with four varieties. The varieties, as listed from north to south, are: Yagwa (spoken around Yagoua), Domo (in Domo village), Walya, and Buguëum.
Western Masa includes Gizay, spoken around Guéré, and Viri (Wina), former ethnic Tupuri who had shifted to the Masa language.
The Muzuk dialect, which has long been considered a Munjuk dialect (ALCAM 1983), is in fact a Masa dialect since it is clearly mutually intelligible with the other Masa varieties (Ousmanou 2007). The speakers of Muzuk are bilingual, and speaking the Muzuk dialect of Masa, as well as Munjuk.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Nov 28, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q56668. The Library of Congress control number is sh86006115. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1983 and 2007.
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This entry incorporates text from “Massa language” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.