Tumbuka language

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Tumbuka
chiTumbuka
Spoken in: Malawi, Zambia, Tanzania. 
Region: Africa
Total speakers: 2 million
Language family: Niger-Congo
 Atlantic-Congo
  Volta-Congo
   Benue-Congo
    Bantoid
     Southern
      Narrow Bantu
       Tumbuka
Language codes
ISO 639-1: none
ISO 639-2: tum
ISO 639-3: tum
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. See IPA chart for English for an English-​based pronunciation key.

The Tumbuka language is a Bantu language which is spoken in parts of Malawi, Zambia, and Tanzania.

The language of the Tumbuka is called chiTumbuka - the 'chi' in front of Tumbuka meaning 'the language of', similar to 'ki' in kiSwahili or 'se' in seTswana.

The World Almanac (1998) estimates approximately 2,000,000 Tumbuka speakers exist in the aforementioned three countries.

There are substantial differences between the form of Tumbuka spoken in urban areas (which borrows some words from Chichewa/Nyanja) and the "village" or "deep" Tumbuka spoken in villages. The Rumphi variant is often regarded as the most "linguistically pure", and is sometimes called "real Tumbuka".

Contents

[edit] Linguistic descriptions

[edit] Written forms

There is apparently no standard orthography.

[edit] Basic Vocabulary

  • Enya = Yes
  • Yayi = No
  • Yewo = Thank you
  • Muli uli? = How are you?
  • Ine nkhuyowoya chiTumbuka yayi! = I do not speak chiTumbuka!
  • Yendani makola. = Travel well.

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

Wikipedia
Tumbuka language edition of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


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