Fwe language
Fwe, or Chifwe, is a Bantu language spoken by 10,000 people along the Okavango River in the Zambezi region of Namibia and in the Western Province in Zambia. It is closely related to Kuhane, and is one of several Bantu languages of the Okavango which have click consonants.
| Fwe | |
|---|---|
| cìfwè | |
| Region | Zambezi region, Namibia and Western Province, Zambia |
Native speakers | 10,200 (2006)[1] |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | fwe |
| Glottolog | fwee1238[2] |
K.402[3] | |
| Person | màfwè |
|---|---|
| People | cìfwè |
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,[4] and thus underscores the vitality of the language.[5]
Regional variation
Main phonological differences between Zambian and Namibian Fwe, as noted by both the speakers and seen in the data:[6]
| Zambian Fwe | Namibian Fwe |
|---|---|
| loss of clicks | maintenance of clicks |
| overgeneralization of /l/ | [l] only as conditioned allophone of /r/ |
| epenthetic [h] frequently used | epenthetic [h] rarely used |
Morphological differences between Zambian and Namibian Fwe:
| Zambian Fwe | Namibian Fwe | |
|---|---|---|
| past | na- | a- |
| reflexive | kí- | rí- |
| remote past | na- | ni- |
| remote future | na- | (á)rá- |
| inceptive | sha- | shi- |
| connective | PP - o | PP - a |
| persistive | shí- | shí-/-sí- |
| negative imperative | ásha- | ásha-/-ása- |
| negative infinitive | shá- | shá-/-sá- |
| negative subjunctive | sha | sha-/-sa- |
| near future | mbo-/mba- | mbo |
Phonology
Consonants
Consonant inventory of Fwe[7] Bilabial Dental/
LabiodentalAlveolar Postalveolar/
PalatalVelar Glottal Click plain [ǀ] [ɡǀ] prenasalized [ⁿǀ̥] [ⁿǀ] Nasal [m] [n] [ɲ] [ŋ] Stop voiceless [p] [t] [k] voiced [b] [d] [ɡ] prenasalized [ᵐp] [ᵐb] [ⁿt] [ⁿd] [ᵑk] [ᵑɡ] Fricative voiceless [f] [s] [ʃ] [h] voiced [β] [v] [z] [ʒ] prenasalized [ᶬf] [ᶬv] [ⁿs] [ⁿz] [ⁿʃ] Affricate plain [tʃ] prenasalized [ⁿtʃ] [ⁿdʒ] Tap [ɾ] Glide [j] [w]
- The plosives /p b d g/ 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.[8]
- Though there are numerous cases where /h/ contrasts with zero, i.e. where /h/ can-not be omitted, [h] is also often used as an epenthetic consonant, in which case it freely commutes with [w], [j] and zero. Phonemic /h/, on the other hand, cannot commute with a glide nor can it be dropped.[9]
Vowels
Fwe has five contrastive vowel phonemes: /ɪ ʊ ɛ ɔ a/.
gollark: Really.
gollark: It might depend on the physical size of the display.
gollark: I'm pretty sure by default it does 150% scale on laptop-sized displays. That's what I've seen on the laptops of the silly Windows users I know.
gollark: And most of the pixel density is in the middle.
gollark: However, not all of it is used on a monitor at a time.
References
- Fwe at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
- Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). "Fwe". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
- Jouni Filip Maho, 2009. New Updated Guthrie List Online
- Gunnink 2018, p. 4
- Gunnink 2018, p. 5
- Gunnink 2018, p. 5, 6
- Gunnink 2018, p. 11, 12
- Gunnink 2018, p. 13
- Gunnink 2018, p. 19
- Gunnink, Hilde (2018). A grammar of Fwe: a Bantu language of Zambia and Namibia (PhD thesis). Ghent University. hdl:1854/LU-8553074.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
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