Nambya language

Nambya
	Nanzva
Native to	Zimbabwe, Botswana
Ethnicity	Nambya people
Native speakers	80,000–100,000[1]
Language family	Niger–Congo Atlantic–Congo Benue–Congo Southern Bantu Kalanga (S.10) Nambya; ; ; ; ; ;
Official status
Official language in	Zimbabwe (both Kalanga and Nambya)
Language codes
ISO 639-3	; nmq – Nambya
Glottolog	namb1291
ELP	Nambya[2]

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,[3][4] with a few speakers in northeastern Botswana. It is either classified as a dialect of Kalanga or as a closely related language.[5] The Zimbabwean constitution, in particular the Education Act, as amended in 1990, recognises Nambya and Kalanga as separate indigenous languages.[5]

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.[5]

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i		u
Mid	e		o
Open		a

Morphology

Like many Bantu languages, Nambya has a highly agglutinative morphology.[5]

References

Nambya at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
Endangered Languages Project data for Nambya.
Ndhlovu, Finex (2009-01-01). The Politics of Language and Nation Building in Zimbabwe. Peter Lang. p. 54. ISBN 9783039119424.
Kamwangamalu, Nkonko; Jr, Richard B. Baldauf; Kaplan, Robert B. (2016-04-08). Language Planning in Africa: The Cameroon, Sudan and Zimbabwe. Routledge. p. 220. ISBN 9781134916887.
Kadenge, Maxwell, D.Phil. (March 2010). "Some Segmental Phonological Processes Involving Vowels in Nambya: A Preliminary Descriptive Account" (PDF).

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[e18-1] Nambya at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)

[ELP1-2] Endangered Languages Project data for Nambya.

[3] Ndhlovu, Finex (2009-01-01). The Politics of Language and Nation Building in Zimbabwe. Peter Lang. p. 54. ISBN 9783039119424.

[4] Kamwangamalu, Nkonko; Jr, Richard B. Baldauf; Kaplan, Robert B. (2016-04-08). Language Planning in Africa: The Cameroon, Sudan and Zimbabwe. Routledge. p. 220. ISBN 9781134916887.

[:0-5] Kadenge, Maxwell, D.Phil. (March 2010). "Some Segmental Phonological Processes Involving Vowels in Nambya: A Preliminary Descriptive Account" (PDF).