Fwe, or Chifwe, 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 10,000 people along the

Okavango River The Okavango River (formerly spelled Okovango or Okovanggo), Also known as the Cubango River, is a river in southwest Africa. It is the fourth-longest river system in southern Africa, running southeastward for . It begins at an elevation of in ...

in the

Zambezi region The Zambezi Region is one of the 14 regions of Namibia. It is located in the north-eastern part of the country. It is largely concurrent with the major Zambezi River where it gets its name from. The region has eight constituencies and its capi ...

Namibia Namibia (, ), officially the Republic of Namibia, is a country in Southern Africa. Its western border is the Atlantic Ocean. It shares land borders with Zambia and Angola to the north, Botswana to the east and South Africa to the south and ea ...

and in the Western Province in

Zambia Zambia (), officially the Republic of Zambia, is a landlocked country at the crossroads of Central, Southern and East Africa, although it is typically referred to as being in Southern Africa at its most central point. Its neighbours are t ...

. It is closely related to Kuhane, and is one of several Bantu languages of the Okavango which have

click consonant Click consonants, or clicks, are speech sounds that occur as consonants in many languages of Southern Africa and in three languages of East Africa. Examples familiar to English-speakers are the ''tut-tut'' (British spelling) or '' tsk! tsk!'' ...

s. Although under the pressure of Lozi and Kuhane (Subiya), Fwe speakers tend to have a positive attitude towards Fwe, and speaking Fwe is often considered an important part of one's identity, and thus underscores the vitality of the language.

Regional variation

Main phonological differences between Zambian and Namibian Fwe, as noted by both the speakers and seen in the data: Morphological differences between Zambian and Namibian Fwe:

Phonology

Consonants

: * The plosives are considered peripheral phonemes, as they are relatively infrequent in the lexicon. They are not reflexes of *p, *b, *d and *g as reconstructed for Proto-Bantu, but mainly appear in loanwords. * Though there are numerous cases where /h/ contrasts with zero, i.e. where /h/ can-not be omitted, is also often used as an

epenthetic In phonology, epenthesis (; Greek ) means the addition of one or more sounds to a word, especially in the beginning syllable ('' prothesis'') or in the ending syllable (''paragoge'') or in-between two syllabic sounds in a word. The word ''epent ...

consonant, in which case it freely commutes with and zero. Phonemic , on the other hand, cannot commute with a glide nor can it be dropped.

Vowels

Fwe has five contrastive vowel phonemes: .

References

* * {{Narrow Bantu languages, J-M Subia languages Languages of Namibia Click languages