Kwangali, or RuKwangali, is a Bantu language spoken by 85,000 people along the Kavango River in Namibia, where it is a national language, and in Angola. It is one of several Bantu languages of the Kavango which have click consonants; these are the dental clicks c and gc, along with prenasalization and aspiration.

Maho (2009) includes Mbunza as a dialect, but excludes Sambyu, which he includes in Manyo.

Phonology

Consonants

BilabialLabio- dentalAlveolarPalatalVelarGlottal
Nasalmnɲ
Plosivevoicelessptk
aspirated
voicedbdɡ
prenasal vl.ᵐpʰⁿtʰᵑkʰ
prenasal vd.ᵐbⁿdⁿdʒᵑɡ
Fricativevoicelessfsʃh
voicedβvz
prenasal vl.ᶬfⁿs
prenasal vd.ᶬvⁿz
Approximantljw
Trillr

A dental click type [ǀ] may also be heard,[how many consonants is this?] being adopted from the neighboring Khoisan languages. The clicks may also tend to be heard as alveolar [!].

Vowels

FrontCentralBack
Highi u
Mide o
Lowa

Short vowels of /i e o u/ may also be pronounced as [ɪ ɛ ɔ ʊ].

  • Dammann, Ernst (1957). Studien zum Kwangali: Grammatik, Texte, Glossar. Hamburg: Cram, de Gruyter
  • Derek Nurse & Gérard Philippson, The Bantu languages, 2003:569.

Books

  • Rukwangali/English for Children, Éditions du Cygne, 2013, ISBN 978-2-84924-310-7