Nambya
Language · official in 1 country
Nambya, also spelled Nambiya and called Nanzwa or Nanzva, is a tonal Bantu language of the Nambya people, centred on the town of Hwange in northwestern Zimbabwe. It is classed either as a dialect of Kalanga or as a close relative, and Zimbabwe's Education Act, as amended in 1990, recognises the two as separate indigenous languages.
The language on record
- ISO 639-3
- NMQ
- Script
- Latin
- Family
- Bantu
- Official in
- 1 country
Where Nambya is official
One entry, Zimbabwe, where Nambya is official beside Kalanga, its nearest relative. The few speakers in northeastern Botswana give it no standing there.
Official beside Nambya
About Nambya
How Nambya relates to Kalanga
Linguists place Nambya and Kalanga together as the western branch of the Shona group of Bantu languages. Whether Nambya counts as a Kalanga dialect or a language of its own is unsettled in the sources. The Kalanga article lists a Nanzwa dialect of Kalanga spoken around Hwange, its name taken from a Kalanga word for north. Zimbabwean law answers the question for itself: the Education Act, as amended in 1990, treats Nambya and Kalanga as separate indigenous languages, and the 2013 Constitution lists each of them among the official languages.
What Nambya sounds like
Nambya is tonal, with five vowels and the consonant and vowel syllable found across Bantu. Syllables with no consonant at the start occur only at the beginning of a word, which makes it typical of the Southern Bantu languages. Its words are built by stacking affixes, a highly agglutinative morphology. Speakers live mainly in northwestern Zimbabwe, with a few across the border in northeastern Botswana.
Common questions
Questions about Nambya
Is Nambya a dialect of Kalanga?
Some classifications treat it as one, others as a closely related language. Zimbabwe's Education Act and its 2013 Constitution list the two separately.
Where is Nambya spoken?
In northwestern Zimbabwe, above all in and around Hwange, with a small number of speakers in northeastern Botswana. The Nambya people are its speakers.
Is Nambya a tonal language?
Yes. It pairs tone with a five-vowel system and syllables that almost always open on a consonant.