Zigula language

The Zigula or Zigua language, Chizigua, is a Bantu language of Tanzania and Somalia, where the Mushunguli (or Mushungulu) dialect is spoken.^[3]

Zigula
Mushunguli
Chizigula
Native to	Tanzania, Somalia
Ethnicity	Zigua, Mushungulu
Native speakers	480,000 (2009–2020)[1]
Language family	Niger–Congo? Atlantic–Congo Volta-Congo Benue–Congo Bantoid Southern Bantoid Bantu Northeast Coast Bantu Seuta Zigula–Ngulu Zigula
Dialects	Mushunguli Zigula
Writing system	Latin
Language codes
ISO 639-3	Either: ziw – Zigula xma – Mushungulu
Glottolog	zigu1244
Guthrie code	G.31,311[2]
ELP	Mushungulu
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People	Wazigula
Language	Chizigula

Mushunguli

The Mushunguli or Mushungulu dialect is spoken by about 34,000 people from the Bantu ethnic minority of southern Somalia, in Jamaame, Kismayo, Mogadishu, and the Juba River valley.^[4]

Mushunguli shows affinities with adjacent Bantu varieties. In particular, it shares strong lexical and grammatical similarities with the language of the Zigua people who inhabit Tanzania, one of the areas in south-eastern Africa where many Bantu in Somalia are known to have been captured from as slaves during the 19th century.^[5] Ethnologue notes that the Mushunguli in Tanzania are the Wazegua.^[4]

Many Mushunguli Bantu men also speak as working languages the Afro-Asiatic Maay and Somali languages of their Somali neighbors.^[4]

Phonology

There is no official or traditional orthography for Mushunguli. However, spelling practices from related Bantu languages can easily be adopted to render the language with minimal phonetic diacritics.

Vowels

	Front	Back
High	ɪ	ʊ
Mid	ɛ	ɔ
Open	a

Consonants

		Labial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar
Nasal		m	n	ɲ	ŋ
Plosive	plain	p	t	t͡ʃ	k
	implosive	ɓ	ɗ	ʄ	ɠ
Fricative	voiceless	f	θ ~ s	ʃ
	voiced	v	ð ~ z		ɦ
Approximant		w	l	j
Flap			ɾ

The fricatives [z] and [s] freely vary with [ð] and [θ], respectively.

Tone

Vowel length is not distinctive, but phonetic length is especially associated with falling tones as in chîga 'leg'. The tone system is similar to that of Tanzanian Zigua.^[6][7]