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Venda language

Bantu language of South Africa and Zimbabwe

Summary

Bantu language of South Africa and Zimbabwe

Field	Value
name	TshiVenda
nativename	Tshivenḓa
states	{{Plainlist
region	Limpopo
speakers	million
date	2011 census
ref	e18
speakers2	1.7 million L2 speakers in South Africa (2002)
familycolor	Niger-Congo
fam2	Atlantic–Congo
fam3	Volta–Congo
fam4	Benue–Congo
fam5	Bantoid
fam6	Southern
fam7	Bantu
fam8	Southern
dia1	Guvhu
dia2	Ilafuri
dia3	Lembetu
dia4	Manda
dia5	Mbedzi
dia6	Phani
dia7	Tavha-Tsindi
script	Latin (Venda alphabet)
Venda Braille
Ditema tsa Dinoko
nation	Zimbabwe
South Africa
ethnicity	Venda, Lemba
iso1	ve
iso2	ven
iso3	ven
lingua	99-AUT-b incl. varieties
99-AUT-baa to 99-AUT-bad
guthrie	S.20 (S.21)
map	South Africa Venda speakers proportion map.svg
mapcaption	Geographical distribution of Tshivenda in South Africa: proportion of the population that speaks Tshivenda at home.
map2	South Africa Venda speakers density map.svg
mapcaption2	Geographical distribution of Tshivenda in South Africa: density of Tshivenda home-language speakers.
notice	IPA
sign	Signed Venda
glotto	vend1245
glottorefname	Venda

South Africa and Zimbabwe
Mozambique Venda Braille Ditema tsa Dinoko South Africa 99-AUT-baa to 99-AUT-bad

Venḓa or Tshivenḓa is a Bantu language and an official language of South Africa and Zimbabwe. It is mainly spoken by the Venda people (or Vhavenḓa) in the northern part of South Africa's Limpopo province, as well as by some Lemba people in South Africa. The Tshivenda language is related to Shona (Karanga and Kalanga) which is spoken in Southern Africa. During the apartheid era of South Africa, the Bantustan of Venda was set up to cover the Venda speakers of South Africa.

According to the 2011 census, Venda speakers are concentrated in the following areas: Makhado Local Municipality, with 350,000 people; Thulamela Local Municipality, with 370,000 people; Musina Local Municipality, with 35,000 people; and Mutale Local Municipality, with 89,000 people. The total number of speakers in Vhembe district currently stands at 844,000. In Gauteng province, there are 275,000 Venda speakers. Fewer than 10,000 are spread across the rest of the country—for a total number of Venda speakers in South Africa at 1.2 million people or just 2.2% of South Africa's population, making Venda speakers the second smallest minority language in South Africa, after the Ndebele language, which number 1.1 million speakers. The population statistics of the Venda people in Zimbabwe are not clear but may currently stand at a million. The people are concentrated in the South of the country but also spread to other towns and cities. There is also a significant number of them in neighbouring South Africa where they are migrant workers.

Writing system

The Venda language uses the Latin alphabet with five additional accented letters. There are four dental consonants with a circumflex accent below the letter (ḓ, ḽ, ṋ, ṱ) and an overdot for velar ṅ. Five vowel letters are used to write seven vowels. The letters C, J and Q are used only for foreign words and names.

Ṱ ṱ	U u	V v	W w	X x	Y y	Z z

letter(s)	value(s) in IPA	notes
a	,
b
bv
bw	or	Varies by dialect
d
dz
dzh		Similar to English "j"
dzw
ḓ
e	,
f
fh
g
h	,	Pronounced before e.
hw
i
j	[j]	In the word Jerusalema
k
kh
khw
l	~	Heard as in free variation.
ḽ
m	,	M is syllabic , when the following syllable begins with m.
n	,	N is syllabic when the following syllable begins with n.
ng
ny
nz
ṋ
ṅ
ṅw
o	,
p
ph
pf
pfh
r
s
sh
sw
t
th
ths
thsh
ts
tsh
tsw
ty
ṱ
ṱh
u
v
vh
w
x		Similar to the ch in Scottish loch.
xw
y
z
zh
zw

Unicode

The extra letters have the following Unicode names:

Ḓ U+1E12 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER D WITH CIRCUMFLEX BELOW
ḓ U+1E13 LATIN SMALL LETTER D WITH CIRCUMFLEX BELOW
Ḽ U+1E3C LATIN CAPITAL LETTER L WITH CIRCUMFLEX BELOW
ḽ U+1E3D LATIN SMALL LETTER L WITH CIRCUMFLEX BELOW
Ṅ U+1E44 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER N WITH DOT ABOVE
ṅ U+1E45 LATIN SMALL LETTER N WITH DOT ABOVE
Ṋ U+1E4A LATIN CAPITAL LETTER N WITH CIRCUMFLEX BELOW
ṋ U+1E4B LATIN SMALL LETTER N WITH CIRCUMFLEX BELOW
Ṱ U+1E70 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER T WITH CIRCUMFLEX BELOW
ṱ U+1E71 LATIN SMALL LETTER T WITH CIRCUMFLEX BELOW

Samples

Some short samples of the language in the writing system(s) used to write the language. You might also include sound samples of the language being spoken.

Luṱhofunḓeraru lwa Mibvumo

The sintu writing system Isibheqe Sohlamvu/Ditema tsa Dinoko, known technically in Venda as Luṱhofunḓeraru lwa Mibvumo, is also used for the Venda language.

ṱala "divorce"	tala "draw a line"

Phonology

Venda distinguishes dental ṱ, ṱh, ḓ, ṋ, ḽ from alveolar t, th, d, n, l as well as (like in Ewe) labiodental f, v from bilabial fh, vh (the last two are slightly rounded). There are no clicks. As in other South African languages like Zulu, ph, ṱh, th, kh are aspirated and the "plain" stops p, ṱ, t, and k are ejective.

Vowels

There are five vowel sounds in Tshivenḓa.

Front	Back	Close	Mid	Open

Consonants

Bilabial	Labio-
dental	Dental	Alveolar	Palatal/
Post-
alveolar	Velar	Glottal	plain	lab.	pal.	plain	sib.	lab.	pal.	plain	lab.	Nasal	Plosive/
Affricate	ejective	aspirated	voiced	Fricative	voiceless	voiced	Approximant	Rhotic	voiced	flap
			()
					()

A labiodental nasal sound appears in prenasalised consonant sounds. is mostly heard as an allophone of in free variation and in loanwords. Labiovelar sounds occur as alternatives to labiopalatal sounds and may also be pronounced . Fortition of occurs after nasal prefixes, likely to .

Tones

Venda has a specified tone, , with unmarked syllables having a low tone. Phonetic falling tone occurs only in sequences of more than one vowel or on the penultimate syllable if the vowel is long. Tone patterns exist independently of the consonants and vowels of a word and so they are word tones. Venda tone also follows Meeussen's rule: when a word beginning with a high tone is preceded by that high tone, the initial high tone is lost. (That is, there cannot be two adjacent marked high tones in a word, but high tone spreads allophonically to a following non-tonic ("low"-tone) syllable.) There are only a few tone patterns in Venda words (no tone, a single high tone on some syllable, two non-adjacent high tones), which behave as follows:

Word	Pattern	After L	After H
–.–.–	thàmà:nà	thámâ:nà	Unmarked (low) tone is raised after a high tone. That is, the preceding tone spreads.
–.–.H	dùkà:ná	dúkâ:ná	A preceding high tone spreads but drops before the final high tone.
–.H.–	dàná:nà	dánâ:nà	The pitch peaks on the tonic syllable, and a preceding non-adjacent high tone merges into it.
–.H.–	phàphá:ná	pháphâ:nà
H.–	má:dzhíè	mâ:dzhìè	Initial high tone spreads. With an immediately preceding high tone, that initial tone is lost.
(The preceding tone also spreads but not as far.)
H.–.–	dáká:lò	dákà:lò
H.–.H	khókhô:lá	khókhò:lá

References

Sources

References

Webb, Vic. 2002. "Language in South Africa: the role of language in national transformation, reconstruction and development." ''Impact: Studies in language and society,'' 14:78
Netshisaulu N.C & Nyoni A. 2021. Tshivenḓa Tsho Vhibvaho. World wide Publishers

Wikipedia Source

This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.

venda-language southern-bantu-languages languages-of-south-africa languages-of-zimbabwe venda

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