Nambya language

Nambya, Nambiya or Nanzwa/Nanzva, is a Bantu language spoken by the Nambya people.^[2] It is spoken in northwestern Zimbabwe, particularly in the town of Hwange,^[3][4] with a few speakers in northeastern Botswana. It is either classified as a dialect of Kalanga or as a closely related language.^[5] The Zimbabwean constitution, in particular the Education Act, as amended in 1990, recognises Nambya and Kalanga as separate indigenous languages.^[5]

Nambya
Nanzva
Native to	Zimbabwe, Botswana
Ethnicity	Nambya people
Native speakers	(100,000 cited 2000–2004)[1]
Language family	Niger–Congo? Atlantic–Congo Volta-Congo Benue–Congo Bantoid Southern Bantoid Bantu Shona languages Kalanga-Nyamba Nambya
Official status
Official language in	Zimbabwe (both Kalanga and Nambya)
Language codes
ISO 639-3	nmq – Nambya
Glottolog	namb1291
ELP	Nambya

Phonology

Nambya is a tonal language. It has a simple 5 vowel system and a typical Bantu consonant-vowel (CV) syllable structure. The language has onsetless syllables, but these are restricted to the word-initial position, making Nambya typical of the Southern Bantu languages.^[5]

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i		u
Mid	e		o
Open		a

Morphology

Like many Bantu languages, Nambya has a highly agglutinative morphology.^[5]