Kalanga, or ''TjiKalanga'' (in Zimbabwe), is a

Bantu language The Bantu languages (English: , Proto-Bantu: *bantʊ̀) are a large family of languages spoken by the Bantu people of Central, Southern, Eastern africa and Southeast Africa. They form the largest branch of the Southern Bantoid languages. The t ...

spoken by the Kalanga people in Botswana and Zimbabwe. It has an extensive phoneme inventory, which includes palatalised,

velarised Velarization is a secondary articulation of consonants by which the back of the tongue is raised toward the velum during the articulation of the consonant. In the International Phonetic Alphabet, velarization is transcribed by one of four diac ...

, aspirated and breathy-voiced consonants, as well as whistled sibilants. Kalanga is recognised as an official language by the Zimbabwean Constitution of 2013 and is taught in schools in areas where its speakers predominate.The iKalanga language is closely related to the Nambya, TshiVenda, and KheLobedu languages of Zimbabwe and South Africa.

Classification and varieties

Linguists place Kalanga (S.16 in Guthrie's classification) and Nambya (in the Hwange region of Zimbabwe) as the western branch of the Shona group (or Shonic, or Shona-Nyai) group of languages, collectively coded as S.10. Kalanga has a dialectal variation between its Botswana and Zimbabwean varieties and they use slightly different orthographies. Historically, Wentzel mentioned Kalanga proper in the east and Lilima (Tjililima, Humbe) on the west, as well as varieties that are now rare or extinct: Nyai (Rozvi), Lemba (Remba), Lembethu (Rembethu), Twamamba (Xwamamba), Pfumbi, Jaunda (Jawunda, Jahunda), and †Romwe, †Peri, †Talahundra (Talaunda).

Phonology

Consonants

* Phonemes occur only as marginal phonemes. * Sounds are sounds that are borrowed from Tswana.

Vowels

Kalanga has a typical five-vowel system:

References

* Chebanne, A. M. & Rodewald, M. K & Pahlen, K. W. (1995) ''Ngatikwaleni iKalanga: A Manual for Writing Kalanga as Spoken in Botswana.'' Gaborone: Botswana Society. * Chebanne, Andy & Schmidt, Daniel (2010). "Kalanga: Summary Grammar". Cape Town, South Africa: CASAS Monograph 75. * Dube, Limukani T. 2021. "Zimbabwe’s Kalanga Orthography: The Strengths and Shortcomings of the 2008 Writing System." ''Arusha Working Papers in African Linguistics'', 3(1): 42-51. * Letsholo, R. (2013)
"Object Markers in Ikalanga"
''Linguistic Discovery''. Dartmouth College. * Mathangwane, Joyce T. (1999) ''Ikalanga Phonetics and Phonology: A Synchronic and Diachronic Study.'' Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.

External links