Ndonga dialect

Ndonga, also called Oshindonga, is a Bantu language spoken in Namibia and parts of Angola. It is a standardized dialect of the Ovambo language, and is mutually intelligible with Kwanyama, the other Ovambo dialect with a standard written form. With 810,000 speakers, the language has the largest number of speakers in Namibia.

"Ndonga" redirects here. For other uses, see Ndonga (disambiguation).
Ndonga
ndonga
Native toNamibia and southern Angola
RegionOvamboland
Native speakers
810,000 (2006)[1]
Language codes
ISO 639-1ng
ISO 639-2ndo
ISO 639-3ndo
Glottologndon1254[2]
R.22[3]
Linguasphere99-AUR-lc

Martti Rautanen translated the Bible into the Ndonga standard.[4]

Phonology

Vowels

Oshindonga uses a five-vowel system:

Front Back
Close iu
Mid eo
Open a

Consonants

Oshindonga contains the following consonant phonemes:

Labial Dental Alveolar Palatal Velar Glottal
Nasal voiceless m̥ n̥ ŋ̊
voiced m n ɲ ŋ
Plosive voiceless p t k ʔ
voiced b d g
affricate ts
Fricative voiceless f θ s ʃ x h
voiced v ð z ʒ ɣ
Approximant central w j
lateral l

Prenasalized sounds are listed below:

  • [m̥p]
  • [mb]
  • [ɱv]
  • [n̥θ]
  • [nð]
  • [n̥ʃ]
  • [n̥t]
  • [nd]
  • [nz]
  • [n̥ts]
  • [ŋk]
  • [ŋɡ]

Oshindonga also contains many other consonant compounds, listed below:

  • [m̥pʰ]
  • [n̥tʰ]
  • [n̥kʰ]
  • [m̥pʰw]
  • [n̥tʰw]
  • [n̥kʰw]
  • [n̥dz]
  • [n̥tsʰ]
  • [ndʒ]
  • [xw]
  • [tsʼ] (voiceless, ejective, alveolar affricate)
  • [psʲ] (voiceless, palatalized, labio-alveolar affricate)
gollark: I mean, there is precedent for capitalizing words to distinguish them from the more generic version, but that doesn't seem particularly relevant here.
gollark: There's not anything stopping you from writing them in lowercase.
gollark: Not really.
gollark: What we really need, clearly, is formally specified English.
gollark: Fine, I'll stick to standard English then. Mostly.

References
  1. Ndonga at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
  2. Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). "Ndonga". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
  3. Jouni Filip Maho, 2009. New Updated Guthrie List Online
  4. "Namiweb.com". Namibweb.com. Archived from the original on 2013-02-13. Retrieved 2013-03-16.
  • Fivaz, Derek (2003). A Reference Grammar of Oshindonga (2 ed.). Windhoek: Out of Africa Publishers.
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