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Kaba (Kabba), or Kabba of Goré, is a language of the Sara people in Central African Republic and Chad, with around 100,000 speakers.

There are several languages named Kaba, which is a local generic term approximately equivalent to Sara. Kaba of Gore is confusing classified as a Sara rather than as a Kaba language.

Kabba is a tonal language. There are three tones, High (H) Mid (M) and Low (L).

Phonology

Consonants

• The glottal stop is only heard in word-initial position, before vowels.
• /h/ occurs only in limited distribution.
• Sounds /t, d, ⁿd/ are heard in complimentary distribution with affricate sounds when in word initial position before /i/.
• /ɗ/ may have a retroflex or trill allophone, when in intervocalic positions.
• /ɾ/ may also be heard as a retroflex in free variation.
• occurs as an allophone of /n/ when before a velar stop, or when at the end of root words or morphemes.

Vowels

• /ə/ is heard as when in CVCV open syllables.

References

1. Kaba at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
2. Moser, Rosmarie (2004). Kabba: A Nilo-Saharan Language of the Central African Republic. München: Lincom.

• The Sara-Bagirmi Language Project -- Kaba

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• Languages of the Central African Republic
• Languages of Chad
• Languages of Cameroon
• Bongo–Bagirmi languages
• Nilo-Saharan language stubs