Orthography:
Ngai does not have an official orthography. Online written Ngai varies in the precise spelling of some words and has no agreed upon tone markers. These variations are likely due to the various regions in which Ngai speakers live, where individuals default to the writing system of another language in the area. For now, on this website, words have been represented using roughly English orthography (j is used for /dʒ/, y is used for both /i/ and /u/, etc.). Tones are not currently represented, but will hopefully be added at some point in the future.

Tones:
There are at least seven tones in Ngai. These tones affect word meaning, so Ngai is a tonal language. The starting height has some importance as a flat mid tone is different from a flat high tone. Below, the seven tones identified thus far are listed and described (in no particular order).

• Low rising: starts low and raises to high
• Mid flat: somewhat neutral, starts in the middle of the total possible pitch region and doesn’t change
• Mid-low-high: similar to Mandarin Chinese’s 3rd tone, this tone starts in the middle, drops slightly and then raises to high
• High flat: starts high and doesn’t change
• Mid rising: starts in the middle and raises to high
• Mid drop: starts in the middle, stays steady for about 2/3 of the total tone and then drops sharply to become low at the end
• Mid jump: starts in the middle, immediately raises to high and then stays steady

Articles for count/mass nouns:
Ngai has an indefinite article (akin to English a/an). This article, jat (/dʒat/) is obligatory when specifying a number of nouns and is placed between the number and the noun. However, mass nouns (nouns that describe something made of many small things or something that is difficult to count–in English these are words that don’t need a/the) do not need jat. Additionally, even count nouns (nouns that are easy to count the number of–in English these are word that do need a/the) do not necessarily need jat when the number is very large. A very large number here would be something over twenty or so, at which point jat becomes optional with count nouns.

When not specifying the number, a different article, geh (/gɛh/) is used instead. This word may be a definite article (akin to English the) or it may be some other sort of determiner. It is obligatory before all count nouns (unless jat is being used instead).

Yes/No and the interrogative marker:
To form yes/no questions, Ngai adds the interrogative marker mow (/moʊ/) to the end of the sentence. An affirmative response would be heh (/hɛh/) and a negative response would be mow heh (/moʊ hɛh/).
Combining the affirmative and negative responses can create sentences as well. For example:
heh mow means ‘Is it like that?’
heh mow heh means ‘Is it or isn’t it?’

Wh- question words:
Non yes/no questions generally employ wh- question words (so called because in English they mostly start with wh-). In some languages these words are always at the beginning of the sentence (wh- movement) but in others the wh- word is located in the same place in the sentence as the expected response would be (in situ). Ngai appears to have in situ wh- question words, but this has not been confirmed. The wh- words documented so far are:
manying /maɲɪŋ/ ‘who’
myna /maɪɲa/ ‘what’
choi now /t͡ʃɔɪ noʊ/ ‘where’
gisi /gisi/ ‘when’

Other interesting things:

• There may be some affixation as the word manying ‘who’ is composed of a prefix ma– and the word for person nying. It is unclear, however, how productive affixation is in the language.
• Possession appears to be indicated via word order by putting the possessor immediately before the possessed.
• Prepositions are used.
• Adjectives precede the noun they modify.
• There is at least one deictic determiner (akin to English that).