Chokwe language
Chokwe is a Bantu language spoken by the Chokwe people of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Angola and Zambia. It is recognised as a national language of Angola, where half a million people were estimated to have spoken it in 1991; another half a million speakers lived in the Congo in 1990, and some 20,000 in Zambia in 2010.[1] It is used as a lingua franca in eastern Angola.
| Chokwe | |
|---|---|
| Ucôkwe (Wuchokwe) | |
| Native to | Angola, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Zambia |
| Ethnicity | Chokwe people |
Native speakers | (980,000 cited 1990–1991)[1] |
| Official status | |
Official language in |  Angola (national language) |
| Regulated by | Instituto de Línguas Nacionais |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | cjk |
| Glottolog | chok1245 |
K.11[2] | |
| Chokwe | |
|---|---|
| Person | Kacôkwe |
| People | Tucôkwe |
| Language | Ucôkwe (Wuchokwe) |
Writing system
Angola's Instituto de Línguas Nacionais (National Languages Institute) has established spelling rules for Chokwe with a view to facilitate and promote its use.
Phonology
Consonants
| Labial | Alveolar | Post- alveolar |
Palatal | Velar | Glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stop | voiceless | p | t | (c) | k | ||
| voiced | b | d | (ɟ) | ɡ | |||
| aspirated | pʰ | tʰ | kʰ | ||||
| prenasal vd. | ᵐb | ⁿd | (ᶮɟ) | ᵑɡ | |||
| prenasal vl. | ᵐp | ||||||
| Affricate | voiceless | p͡f | t͡f | t͡ʃ | |||
| voiced | t͡v | d͡ʒ | |||||
| prenasal | ⁿd͡v | ⁿd͡ʒ | |||||
| Fricative | voiceless | f | s | ʃ | h | ||
| voiced | v | z | ʒ | ||||
| prenasal | ⁿz | ⁿʒ | |||||
| Nasal | m | n | ɲ | ||||
| Approximant | lateral | l | ʎ | ||||
| plain | j | w | |||||
Affricate sounds /t͡ʃ, d͡ʒ, ⁿd͡ʒ/ may also be pronounced as palatal stops [c, ɟ, ᶮɟ].
References
- Chokwe at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
- Jouni Filip Maho, 2009. New Updated Guthrie List Online
- Ualhanga, Xavier Chipuleno (2017). Antroponímia na Língua Cokwe (Lunda-Norte) [Anthroponymy in the Cokwe Language (Lunda-Norte)] (Master's thesis) (in Portuguese). Universidade NOVA de Lisboa. hdl:10362/21952.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
- Martins, João Vicente (1990). Elementos de Gramática de Utchokwe [Utchokwe Grammar Elements] (in Portuguese). Lisboa: Instituto de Investigação Científica Tropical. pp. 25–32.
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