Ndonga dialect

Ndonga
Oshindonga
Native to	Namibia and southern Angola
Region	Ovamboland
Native speakers	810,000 (2006)
Language family	Niger–Congo Atlantic–Congo Benue–Congo 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
Linguasphere	99-AUR-lc

Ndonga, also called Oshindonga, is a Bantu language spoken in Namibia and some 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 281,500 speakers, the language has the largest number of speakers in Namibia.

Martti Rautanen translated the Bible into the Ndonga standard.

Phonology

Vowels

Oshinonga uses a five-vowel system:

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i		u
Mid	e		o
Open		a

Consonants

Oshinonga contains the following consonant phonemes:

		Labial	Inter- dental	Alveolar	Post- alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Nasal	voiceless	m̥		n̥			ŋ̊
	voiced	m		n		ɲ	ŋ
Plosive	voiceless	p		t			k	ʔ
	voiced	b		d			g
Fricative	voiceless	f		s	ʃ	x		h
	voiced	v	ð	z	ʒ	ɣ
Approximant					j	w
Lateral				l

Oshinonga also contains many consonant compounds, listed below:

• m̥pʰ
• n̥tʰ
• n̥kʰ
• m̥pʰw
• n̥tʰw
• n̥kʰw
• n̥th
• n̥dz
• n̥tsʰ
• xw
• tsˈ (voiceless, ejective, alveolor affricate)
• psʲˈ (voiceless, palatalized, labio-alveolar affricate)

External links

• Ndonga