Nambya language
Bantu language of northwest Zimbabwe and Botswana
| Nambya | |
|---|---|
| Nanzva | |
| Native to | Zimbabwe, Botswana |
| Ethnicity | Nambya people |
Native speakers | 100,000 (2000–2004)[1] |
Language family | Niger–Congo?
|
| Official status | |
Official language in | Zimbabwe (both Kalanga and Nambya) |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | nmq – Nambya |
| Glottolog | namb1291 |
| ELP | Nambya |
Nambya, or Nanzwa/Nanzva, is a Bantu language spoken by the Nambya people. It is spoken in northwestern Zimbabwe, particularly in the town of Hwange,[2][3] with a few speakers in northeastern Botswana. It is either classified as a dialect of Kalanga or as a closely related language.[4] The Zimbabwean constitution, in particular the Education Act, as amended in 1990, recognises Nambya and Kalanga as separate indigenous languages.[4]
Phonology
Nambya is a tonal language. It has a simple 5 vowel system and a typical Bantu consonant-vowel (CV) syllable structure. The language has onsetless syllables, but these are restricted to the word-initial position, making Nambya typical of the Southern Bantu languages.[4]
Vowels
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Close | i | u | |
| Mid | e | o | |
| Open | a |
Morphology
Like many Bantu languages, Nambya has a highly agglutinative morphology.[4]
References
- ^ Nambya at Ethnologue (25th ed., 2022)
- ^ Ndhlovu, Finex (1 January 2009). The Politics of Language and Nation Building in Zimbabwe. Peter Lang. p. 54. ISBN 9783039119424.
- ^ Kamwangamalu, Nkonko; Baldauf, Richard B. Jr.; Kaplan, Robert B. (8 April 2016). Language Planning in Africa: The Cameroon, Sudan and Zimbabwe. Routledge. p. 220. ISBN 9781134916887.
- ^ a b c d Kadenge, Maxwell (March 2010). "Some Segmental Phonological Processes Involving Vowels in Nambya: A Preliminary Descriptive Account" (PDF). The Journal of Pan African Studies. 3 (6): 239–252.
Further reading
- Borland, Colin H. (1984). "Conflicting methodologies of Shona dialect classification". South African Journal of African Languages. 4 (1): 1–12. doi:10.1080/02572117.1984.10586564.
- Chabata, Emmanuel (2007). The Nambya Verb With Special Emphasis On The Causative (PhD thesis). University of Oslo. OCLC 553889339.
- Doke, Clement Martyn (1931). A comparative study of Shona phonetics. Johannesburg: University of the Witwatersrand Press.
- Hachipola, Simooya Jerome (1998). A Survey of the Minority Languages of Zimbabwe. Harare: University of Zimbabwe Publications. ISBN 9780908307661. OCLC 42736812.
- Hasselbring, Sue (2000). A sociolinguistic survey of the languages of Botswana. Sociolinguistic studies of Botswana language series. Vol. 1. Gaborone: Basarwa Languages Project.
- Kadenge, Maxwell (2006). The Phonology of Nambya (MA thesis). University of Zimbabwe.
- Moreno, Augustine (1988). Nambya dictionary. Gweru: Mambo Press.
- Wentzel, Petrus Johannes (1983). Nau dzabaKalanga [A history of the Kalanga]. Vol. 1–3. Pretoria: University of South Africa.
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