Matuumbi, also known as Kimatuumbi and Kimatumbi, is a language spoken in

Tanzania Tanzania (; ), officially the United Republic of Tanzania ( sw, Jamhuri ya Muungano wa Tanzania), is a country in East Africa within the African Great Lakes region. It borders Uganda to the north; Kenya to the northeast; Comoro Islands ...

in the Kipatimu region of the Kilwa District, south of the Rufiji river. It 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. T ...

, P13 in

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classification. Kimatuumbi is closely related to the Ngindo, Rufiji and Ndengereko languages. It is spoken by about 70,000 people, according to the Ethnologue. ''Matuumbi'' is the augmentative plural of the Kimatuumbi word for 'hills' (singular form: ''kituumbi'', class 7/8). ''Ki-'' is a Bantu

noun class In linguistics, a noun class is a particular category of nouns. A noun may belong to a given class because of the characteristic features of its referent, such as gender, animacy, shape, but such designations are often clearly conventional. Some ...

prefix attached to nouns of the class that includes languages (cf. Kiswahili, Kikongo).

Notes

References

* Odden, David (1996) ''The Phonology and Morphology of Kimatuumbi''. (The Phonology of the World's Languages). Oxford: Clarendon Press. * Krumm, B. (1912) ''Grundriss einer Grammatik des Kimatuumbi.'' Mitteilungen des Seminars für Orientalischen Sprachen, III. Rufiji-Ruvuma languages Languages of Tanzania {{Bantu-lang-stub