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]

Nambya
Nanzva
Native toZimbabwe, Botswana
EthnicityNambya people
Native speakers
100,000 (2000–2004)[1]
Official status
Official language in
Zimbabwe (both Kalanga and Nambya)
Language codes
ISO 639-3
nmq – Nambya
Glottolognamb1291
ELPNambya

Phonology

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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

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Front Central Back
Close i u
Mid e o
Open a

Morphology

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Like many Bantu languages, Nambya has a highly agglutinative morphology.[4]

References

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  1. ^ Nambya at Ethnologue (25th ed., 2022)  
  2. ^ Ndhlovu, Finex (1 January 2009). The Politics of Language and Nation Building in Zimbabwe. Peter Lang. p. 54. ISBN 9783039119424.
  3. ^ 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.
  4. ^ 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

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  • 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.