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Venda language
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Venda Tshivenḓa |
||
|---|---|---|
| Spoken in: |  South Africa Zimbabwe |
|
| Region: | Limpopo Province | |
| Total speakers: | 750,000 | |
| Language family: | Niger-Congo Atlantic-Congo Volta-Congo Benue-Congo Bantoid Southern Bantoid Narrow Bantu Venda |
|
| Official status | ||
| Official language in: | South Africa |
|
| Regulated by: | no official regulation | |
| Language codes | ||
| ISO 639-1: | ve | |
| ISO 639-2: | ven | |
| ISO 639-3: | ven | |
| Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. | ||
Venda, also known as Tshivenḓa, or Luvenḓa, is a Bantu language. The majority of Venda speakers live in South Africa (where Venda is an official language), but there are also speakers in Zimbabwe. Before South Africa became a democratic country, the bantustan of Venda was set up to cover the Venda speakers of South Africa.
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Venda belongs to the Bantu branch of the Niger-Congo languages.
Venda is spoken by about 666,000 people in the northern part of South Africa's Limpopo Province, as well as 84,000 people in Zimbabwe.
Venda is an official language in South Africa.
The Venda language uses the Latin alphabet with 5 additional accented letters. The letters C, J and Q are used only in quoting foreign words and names.
| A a | B b | (C c) | D d | Ḓ ḓ | E e | F f | |
| G g | H h | I i | (J j) | K k | L l | Ḽ ḽ | |
| M m | N n | Ṋ ṋ | Ṅ ṅ | O o | P p | (Q q) | |
| R r | S s | T t | Ṱ ṱ | U u | V v | W w | |
| X x | Y y | Z z |
| letter(s) | value(s) in IPA | notes |
|---|---|---|
| a | [a] | |
| b | [b] | |
| bw | [bγw] or [bj] | Varies by dialect |
| d | [d] | |
| dz | [ʣ] | |
| dzh | [ʤ] | Similar to English "j" |
| dzw | [ʣw] | |
| ḓ | [d̪] | |
| e | [ɛ], [e] | |
| f | [f] | |
| fh | [ɸ] | |
| g | [ɡ] | |
| h | [ɦ], [h] | Pronounced as [h] before e. |
| hw | [ɣw] | |
| i | [i] | |
| k | [kˀ] | |
| kh | [kʰ] | |
| khw | [kʰw] | |
| l | [ɭ] | |
| ḽ | [l̪] | |
| m | [m], [ɱ] | Pronounced as [ɱ] before v and vh. M is syllabic, [m̩], when following syllable begins with m. |
| n | [n] | Pronounced as [n̪] before ḓ and ṱ. N is syllabic, [n̩], when following syllable begins with n. |
| ng | [ŋɡ] | |
| ny | [ɲ] | |
| nz | [nʣ] | |
| ṋ | [n̪] | |
| ṅ | [ŋ] | |
| ṅw | [ŋw] | |
| o | [ɔ], [o] | |
| p | [pˀ] | |
| ph | [pʰ] | |
| r | [r] | |
| s | [s] | |
| sh | [ʃ] | |
| sw | [ʂ] | |
| t | [tˀ] | |
| th | [tʰ] | |
| ts | [ʦ] | |
| tsh | [tʃʰ] | |
| tsw | [ʦw] | |
| ty | [c] | |
| ṱ | [t̪] | |
| u | [u] | |
| v | [v] | |
| vh | [β] | |
| w | [w] | |
| x | [x] | Similar to the ch in Scottish 'loch.' |
| y | [j] | |
| z | [z] | |
| zh | [ʒ] | |
| zw | [ʐ] |
- Ethnologue entry for Venda
- Tshivenda - South African Languages
- Batho Portal Welcome page in Venda
- PanAfrican L10n page on Venda
- Spell checker for OpenOffice.org and Mozilla, OpenOffice.org, Mozilla Firefox web-browser, and Mozilla Thunderbird email program in Venda
- Translate.org.za Project to translate Free and Open Source Software into all the official languages of South Africa including Venda
- Keyboard with extra venda characters
|
Languages of the Republic of South Africa |
|---|
| Official languages
Afrikaans · English · isiNdebele · Northern Sotho · Sesotho · Siswati · Xitsonga · Setswana · Tshivenḓa · isiXhosa · isiZulu |
| Non-official languages
Fanagalo · Kxoe · Lobedu · Nama · Northern Ndebele · Phuthi · Tsotsitaal · Other Khoisan · South African Sign Language |
|
Languages of the Republic of Zimbabwe |
|---|
| ɮ | This Niger-Congo languages-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |