Kwanyama dialect
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| Kwanyama | |
|---|---|
| Oshikwanyama | |
| Native to | Namibia and Angola |
| Region | Ovamboland |
Native speakers | (250,000 in Namibia (2006); 420,000 in Angola cited 1993)[1] |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-1 | kj |
| ISO 639-2 | kua |
| ISO 639-3 | kua |
| Glottolog | kuan1247[2] |
R.21[3] | |
| Linguasphere | 05-PEA-aa |
Kwanyama or Oshikwanyama is a national language of Angola and Namibia. It is a standardized dialect of the Ovambo language, and is mutually intelligible with Oshindonga, the other Ovambo dialect with a standard written form.
The entire Christian Bible has been translated into Kwanyama and was first published in 1974 under the name Ombibeli by the South African Bible Society.[4]
Phonology[edit]
| Labial | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plosive | voiceless | p | t~t̪ | tʃ | k | |
| voiced | b | d~d̪ | dʒ | |||
| prenasal | ᵐb | ⁿd | ⁿdʒ | ᵑɡ | ||
| Fricative | voiceless | f | (s) | ʃ | x | h |
| voiced | v | |||||
| Nasal | voiced | m | n | ɲ | ||
| voiceless | m̥ | n̥ | ɲ̊ | ŋ̊ | ||
| Approximant | w | l | j | |||
/t/ and /d/ are dentalized when followed by a front vowel /i/. An /s/ sound can only occur in loanwords.
| Front | Back | |
|---|---|---|
| Close | i | u |
| Mid | e | o |
| Open | a | |
References[edit]
- Crane, Thera; Lindgren-Streicher, Karl; Wingo, Andy (2004). Hai ti! A Beginner's Guide to Oshikwanyama (PDF).
- Halme, Riikka (2004). A Tonal Grammar of Kwanyama. pp. 12–18.
- Zimmerman, W.; Hasheela, P. (1998). Oshikwanyama Grammar. Windhoek: Gamsberg Macmillan.
- ^ Kwanyama at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
- ^ Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). "Kuanyama". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
- ^ Jouni Filip Maho, 2009. New Updated Guthrie List Online
- ^ Ombibeli, 1974, front page
External links[edit]
| Kwanyama dialect test of Wikipedia at Wikimedia Incubator |
- Language map of Namibia
- Grammar and vocabulary (in Spanish)
- PanAfrican L10n page on Kwanyama
- Omalinjongameno Ōngeleka. (Services of the Church in Kwanyama Authorised for Use in the Diocese of Damaraland, 1957) digitized by Richard Mammana 2015
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