The Mwani language, also known by its native name Kimwani, ( ) is a Bantu language spoken on the coast of the

Cabo Delgado Province Cabo Delgado is the northernmost province of Mozambique. It has an area of and a population of 2,320,261 (2017). It borders the Mtwara Region in the neighbouring country of Tanzania, and the provinces of Nampula and Niassa. The Province is ri ...

Mozambique Mozambique, officially the Republic of Mozambique, is a country located in Southeast Africa bordered by the Indian Ocean to the east, Tanzania to the north, Malawi and Zambia to the northwest, Zimbabwe to the west, and Eswatini and South Afr ...

, including the Quirimbas Islands. Although it shares high lexical similarity (60%) with Swahili, it is not intelligible with it. It is spoken by around 167,150 people (including 147,150 who speak it as a first language and 20,000 who use it as their second language). Speakers also use Portuguese (the official language of

), Swahili and Makhuwa language. ''Kiwibo'', the dialect of the Island of Ibo is the prestige dialect. ''Kimwani'' (sometimes spelled as ''Quimuane'') is also called ''Mwani'' (sometimes spelled as: ''Mwane, Muane'') and ''Ibo''. According to Anthony P. Grant Kimwani of northern

appears to be the result of imperfect shift towards Swahili several centuries ago by speakers of Makonde, and Arends et al. suggest it might turn out to be a Makonde–Swahili

mixed language A mixed language, also referred to as a hybrid language or fusion language, is a type of contact language that arises among a bilingual group combining aspects of two or more languages but not clearly deriving primarily from any single language. ...

.Arends, Muysken, & Smith (1995), ''Pidgins and Creoles: An Introduction''

Name

The name of the language comes from the word "Mwani", meaning "beach". The prefix "Ki" means the language of, so "Kimwani" literally means "language of the beach".

Sounds

''Kimwani'' (similar to Swahili) is unusual among sub-Saharan languages in having lost the feature of lexical tone (with the exception of some verbal paradigms where its use is optional). It does not have the penultimate stress typical of Swahili; it has movable

pitch accent A pitch-accent language is a type of language that, when spoken, has certain syllables in words or morphemes that are prominent, as indicated by a distinct contrasting pitch (music), pitch (tone (linguistics), linguistic tone) rather than by vol ...

Labialization Labialization is a secondary articulatory feature of sounds in some languages. Labialized sounds involve the lips while the remainder of the oral cavity produces another sound. The term is normally restricted to consonants. When vowels invol ...

of consonants (indicated by a following the consonant) and palatalization of r (ry; j are frequent.

Nasalization In phonetics, nasalization (or nasalisation in British English) is the production of a sound while the velum is lowered, so that some air escapes through the nose during the production of the sound by the mouth. An archetypal nasal sound is . ...

of vowels occurs only before a nasal consonant n followed by a consonant.

Vowels

''Kimwani'' has five vowel

phoneme A phoneme () is any set of similar Phone (phonetics), speech sounds that are perceptually regarded by the speakers of a language as a single basic sound—a smallest possible Phonetics, phonetic unit—that helps distinguish one word fr ...

s: , , , , and , that is: its vowels are close to those of Spanish and Hawaiian. It does not have a distinction of closed and

open Open or OPEN may refer to: Music * Open (band), Australian pop/rock band * The Open (band), English indie rock band * ''Open'' (Blues Image album), 1969 * ''Open'' (Gerd Dudek, Buschi Niebergall, and Edward Vesala album), 1979 * ''Open'' (Go ...

mid vowel A mid vowel (or a true-mid vowel) is any in a class of vowel sounds used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a mid vowel is that the tongue is positioned approximately midway between an open vowel and a close vowel. Other n ...

s typical of Portuguese or French and found in some other

Bantu languages The Bantu languages (English: , Proto-Bantu language, Proto-Bantu: *bantʊ̀), or Ntu languages are a language family of about 600 languages of Central Africa, Central, Southern Africa, Southern, East Africa, Eastern and Southeast Africa, South ...

Lingala Lingala (or Ngala, Lingala: ) is a Bantu languages, Bantu language spoken in the northwest of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the northern half of the Republic of the Congo, in their capitals, Kinshasa and Brazzaville, and to a lesser de ...

, Fang, and perhaps Sukuma. The pronunciation of the phoneme /i/ stands between

International Phonetic Alphabet The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standard written representation ...

and Vowels are never reduced, regardless of stress. The vowels are pronounced as follows: * is pronounced like the "a" in Arabic ''hajj'' * is pronounced like the "e" in ''beat'' * is pronounced like the "y" in ''yam'' * is pronounced like the "o" in ''or'' * is pronounced like the "u" in ''Sue''. Kimwani has no

diphthong A diphthong ( ), also known as a gliding vowel or a vowel glide, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of ...

s; in vowel combinations, each vowel is pronounced separately.

Consonants

Orthography

''Kimwani'' can be spelled in three ways: using orthography similar to Swahili, using a slightly modified spelling system used in Mozambique schools or using a Portuguese-based spelling. Here are the differences: {, class="wikitable" , +Kimwani spelling systems differences ! ! Swahili language spelling ! Modified spelling ! Portuguese spelling ! Translation , - !{align="center", , align="center", chala , align="center", cala , align="center", tchala , align="center", finger , - !{align="center", , align="center", juwa , align="center", juwa , align="center", djua , align="center", Sun , - !{align="center", , align="center", kitabu , align="center", kitabu , align="center", quitabo , align="center", book , - !{align="center", , align="center", ng'ombe , align="center", ng'ombe , align="center", ngombe , align="center", cow , - !{align="center", , align="center", nyoka , align="center", nyoka , align="center", nhoca , align="center", snake , - !{align="center", , align="center", fisi , align="center", fisi , align="center", fissi , align="center", hyena , - !{align="center", , align="center", meza , align="center", meza , align="center", mesa , align="center", table , - !{align="center", , align="center", kushanga , align="center", kushanga , align="center", cuxanga , align="center", to admire , - !{align="center", , align="center", wakati , align="center", wakati , align="center", uacate , align="center", time , - !{align="center", , align="center", kipya , align="center", kipya , align="center", quípia , align="center", new , - !{align="center", , align="center", sukili , align="center", sukili , align="center", suquile , align="center", sugar , - !{align="center", , align="center", ufu , align="center", ufu , align="center", ufo , align="center", flour , -

Numbers

moja (1), mbili (2), natu (3), n’né (4), tano (5) sita (6), saba (7), nane (8), kenda (9) kumi (10), kumi na moja (11), kumi na mbili (12) Ishirini (20), thelathini (30), arubaini (40), hamsini (50) sitini (60), sabini (70), themanini (80), tisini (90) mia (100), mia mbili (200) Elfu (1000) elfu mbili (2000)

References

* Petzell, Malin. ''A sketch of Kimwani (a minority language of Mozambique)''; Africa & Asia, #2, pp. 88–110, Göteborg University. 2002. * ''Namuna ya kufifunda kufyoma na kwandika (Manual de transição, língua Kimwani)''; SIL & JUWA; Pemba, Cabo Delgado, Mozambique. 2002. * {{Narrow Bantu languages (Zones E–H) Languages of Mozambique Swahili language