Kwangali, or RuKwangali, is a
Bantu language spoken by 85,000 people along the
Kavango 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
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 ...
, where it is a national language, and in
Angola
, national_anthem = " Angola Avante"()
, image_map =
, map_caption =
, capital = Luanda
, religion =
, religion_year = 2020
, religion_ref =
, coordina ...
. It is one of several Bantu languages of the Kavango which have
click consonants; these are the
dental click
Dental (or more precisely denti-alveolar) clicks are a family of click consonants found, as constituents of words, only in Africa and in the Damin ritual jargon of Australia.
In English, the ''tut-tut!'' (British spelling, "tutting") or ''t ...
s ''c'' and ''gc,'' along with
prenasalization
Prenasalized consonants are phonetic sequences of a nasal and an obstruent (or occasionally a non-nasal sonorant such as ) that behave phonologically like single consonants. The primary reason for considering them to be single consonants, rath ...
and
aspiration.
Maho (2009) includes Mbunza as a dialect, but excludes Sambyu, which he includes in
Manyo.
Phonology
Consonants
A dental click type may also be heard, being adopted from the neighboring Khoisan languages. The clicks may also tend to be heard as alveolar .
Vowels
Short vowels of /i e o u/ may also be pronounced as
ª É› É” ÊŠ
References
* Dammann, Ernst (1957). ''Studien zum Kwangali: Grammatik, Texte, Glossar.'' Hamburg: Cram, de Gruyter
* Derek Nurse & Gérard Philippson, ''The Bantu languages,'' 2003:569.
Books
* ''Rukwangali/English for Children'',
Éditions du Cygne, 2013,
Biblical passages in Kwangali
Kavango languages
Languages of Angola
Languages of Namibia
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