#umbundu

Umbundu (úmbúndú)

Basic facts

Number of native speakers: 9.5 million

Official language: Angola

Script: Latin, 27 letters

Grammatical cases: 0

Linguistic typology: agglutinative, SVO

Language family: Niger-Congo, Atlantic-Congo, Volta-Congo, Benue-Congo, Bantoid, Southern Bantoid, Narrow Bantu, Central-Western Bantu, Njila, Southern Njila, Kunene

Number of dialects: 1

History

1963 - first dictionary and grammar

Writing system and pronunciation

These are the letters that make up the alphabet: a ã b c d e ẽ f g i j k l m n ny o õ p r s t u ũ v w y.

There are three tones, low, high, and downstepped high. The first acute accent in a word represents a high tone, while subsequent ones represent downstepped high tones. The low tone is depicted by a grave accent.

Grammar

Nouns have classes, two numbers (singular and plural), and no cases.

Complements follow the noun.

Verbs are conjugated for mood (conjunctive, imperative, and indicative). Time, person, and number are expressed by words that are not part of verbal forms.

Dialects

árvore mulemba, a figueira afrikana . Musoso wa Ambundu (conto Ambundu). – Reza a estória que o coelho era um grande caçador e a sua fama estendeu-se por todas aldeias vizinhas, por isso decidiu deixar os seus pais e foi viver com os seus amigos, pois o dinheiro e o sucesso subiram-lhe a cabeça. Durante muito tempo viveu com os seus amigos. Passado um tempo, ngana dihulu disse o seguinte: –…

My sister and her friends singing in umbundu. They are called Kumossi.

Kumossi is umbundu for “united” or “we’re together”. 

For those who don’t know umbundu is one of the languages of Angola.