Masaba

Bantu language in East Africa

Languagelanguage modern languageQ3740241

Also known as Masaba language · Masaaba

Subclass of: Masaba-Luhya
Indigenous to: Kapchorwa District
, Mbale District
, Sironko District
+3 more

Overview

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia · Read full article · Text CC BY-SA 4.0

Masaba (Lumasaaba), sometimes known as Gisu (Lugisu) after one of its dialects, is a Bantu language spoken by more than two million people in East Africa. The Gisu dialect in eastern Uganda is mutually intelligible with Bukusu, spoken by ethnic Luhya in western Kenya. Masaba is the local name of Mount Elgon and the name of the son of the ancestor of the Gisu tribe. Like other Bantu languages, Lumasaba nouns are divided into several sets of noun classes. These are similar to the genders in Germanic and Romance languages, except that instead of the usual two or three, there are around eighteen different noun classes. The language has a quite complex verb morphology.

Overview

All data

25 statements · 44% with external sources · numbers in brackets are citations

Ethnologue language status: 5 Developing
1
Sources
1.Stated in Ethnologueethnologue.com/language/myxRetrieved 2019-05-09
View statement on Wikidata ↗
Country: Uganda
1
Sources
1.“ScriptSource - Uganda”scriptsource.org/country/UGRetrieved 2023-08-21
View statement on Wikidata ↗

On other databases

13 identifiers linking Masaba across the web's reference databases

Data quality

statements

44%

externally sourced

Source last edited May 29, 2026. AIDb refreshes this page daily.

Suggest a fact or correction

Links

Use this data

curl https://aidb.si/api/v1/entities/Q3740241

API docs, limits & keys

Cite this page

AIDb. (2026). Masaba (Q3740241). Retrieved from https://aidb.si/e/masaba-Q3740241