Ndonga

"Ndonga dialect" redirects here. For other uses, see Ndonga dialect (disambiguation).

Ndonga, also called Oshindonga, is a Bantu dialect 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
ndonga
Native to	Namibia and southern Angola
Region	Ovamboland
Native speakers	810,000 (2006)[1]
Language family	Niger–Congo? Atlantic–Congo Benue–Congo Southern Bantoid Bantu Kavango–Southwest Southwest Bantu Ovambo Ndonga
Language codes
ISO 639-1	ng
ISO 639-2	ndo
ISO 639-3	ndo
Glottolog	ndon1254
Guthrie code	R.22[2]
Linguasphere	99-AUR-lc

Martti Rautanen translated the Bible into the Ndonga dialect. Beginning his work in 1885, he published the New Testament in 1903, but it took until 1920 to finish the Old Testament. His Bible translation became the basis of a standardized form of Ndonga.^[3]

Phonology

Vowels

Oshindonga uses a five-vowel system:

	Front	Back
Close	i	u
Mid	e	o
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)

Tones

Oshidonga has two tones: high and low.