INTRODUCTION

The Language and the People

Ngaalam has never been a majority language. In fact, it was a language considered to
have disappeared or became extinct a century ago. The Ngaalmer have been rediscovered
as a distinct group speaking a language called Ngaalam by the author in January 2015.
Their location lies in the South Western Ethiopia in the Anuak Zone of Gambella
Regional State (Map).
The speakers of Ngaalam are scattered in the forest belt of South Western Ethiopia
among the Baale and Majang speakers and are estimated, by our principal language
assistants, to be around 1500 individuals. Since the Ngaalamer (see below on
nomenclature) are widely dispersed into a vast area and interspersed with other
communities, at this stage, it is difficult to know the exact number of speakers of the
language. None of the national population censuses conducted by the Ethiopian
government in 1994 and in 2007 mentioned the Ngaalamer. They have never been
mentioned in any official document at regional nor federal level and their very existence
was unknown until 2015.

Nomenclature

Historically, the Ngaalam were known under a variety of other names which also appear
in the literature. The self-name or the ethnic name of the group is Ngaalamer; Ngaalamit
is the singular form.
The neighboring tribes call them by a variety of names: Anuaks call them Olam (which
means according to the principal informant „the name of a tree‟); this name is often seen
in some of the old writings (Evans-Pritchard 1940; Bryan 1945). The Majang call them
Majir; the Tirma-Chai, neighboring Surmic tribes, call them Ngidini [ŋidini] while the
Baale call them Ngaalama [ŋaalama].
The Ngaalamer call their neighbors by different names: Berier for Anuaks; Suri for the
Baale and Tirma-Chai. They also call the Murle by their self-name – Murle. The
Ngaalamer sometimes use the name Tama [t’ama] as a self-name but stress that their
ethnic name is Ngaalamer. According to the elders, Tama is a name used by outsiders to
refer to the Ngaamaler but without any negative connotation.
The identity of the group, the nomenclature referring to their language as well as the
linguistic classification of the language has been recently clarified based on a comparison
made between Ngaalam and ten Surmic languages. It has now become clear that Ngaalam
is a distinct language within the Surmic group. More specifically, Ngaalam has been
classified as a coordinate branch of the Didinga-Murle-Baale group that forms the South
West Surmic branch. (See comparative data and linguistic classification in Moges (2015)
Ngaalam: sketch of grammar and its genetic position).