Venda language

Not to be confused with Vedda language.

Venda
Tshivenḓa
Spoken in	South Africa  Zimbabwe
Region	Limpopo Province
Native speakers	1.1 million  (2006)
Language family	Niger–Congo Atlantic–Congo Benue–Congo Bantoid Bantu Southern Bantu Venda
Writing system	Latin
Official status
Regulated by	No official regulation
Language codes
ISO 639-1	ve
ISO 639-2	ven
ISO 639-3	ven
This page contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters.

Venda, also known as Tshivenḓa, or Luvenḓa, is a Bantu language and an official language of South Africa. The majority of Venda speakers live in South Africa, but there are also speakers in Zimbabwe. The Venda language is related to Kalanga (Western Shona, different from Shona, official language of Zimambwe) which is spoken in Botswana and Zimbabwe. During the Apartheid era of South Africa, the bantustan of Venda was set up to cover the Venda speakers of South Africa.

Classification

Venda belongs to the Bantu branch of the Niger–Congo languages.

Geographic distribution

Geographical distribution of Tshivenda in South Africa: proportion of the population that speaks Tshivenda at home.

0–20%   20–40%   40–60%

60–80%   80–100%

Geographical distribution of Tshivenda in South Africa: density of Tshivenda home-language speakers.

<1 /km²   1–3 /km²   3–10 /km²   10–30 /km²   30–100 /km²

100–300 /km²   300–1000 /km²   1000–3000 /km²   >3000 /km²

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.

Writing system

The Venda language uses the Latin alphabet with 5 additional accented letters—there are 4 consonants with circumflex below the letter (ḓ, ḽ, ṋ, ṱ) and an overdot (ṅ). The letters C, J and Q are used only in quoting foreign words and names.

The Venda alphabet

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]
bv	[b̪v]
bw	[bɣw] or [bj]	Varies by dialect
d	[d]
dz	[d͡z]
dzh	[d͡ʒ]	Similar to English "j"
dzw	[d͡zw]
ḓ	[d̪]
e	[ɛ], [e]
f	[f]
fh	[ɸ]
g	[ɡ]
h	[ɦ], [h]	Pronounced h] before e.
hw	[ɣw]
i	[i]
k	[kˀ]
kh	[kʰ]
khw	[kʰw]
l	[ɭ]
ḽ	[l̪]
m	[m], [m̩]	M is syllabic, [m̩], when the following syllable begins with m.
n	[n], [n̩]	N is syllabic, when the following syllable begins with n.
ng	[ŋɡ]
ny	[ɲ]
nz	[nd͡z]
ṋ	[n̪]
ṅ	[ŋ]
ṅw	[ŋw]
o	[ɔ], [o]
p	[pˀ]
ph	[pʰ]
pf	[p̪f]
pfh	[p̪fʰ]
r	[ɾ]
s	[s]
sh	[ʃ]
sw	[ʂ]
t	[tˀ]
th	[tʰ]
ts	[t͡s]
tsh	[t͡ʃʰ]
tsw	[t͡sw]
ty	[c]
ṱ	[t̪]
ṱh	[t̪h]
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]

Unicode

The extra letters have the following Unicode names

• Ḓ U+1E12 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER D WITH CIRCUMFLEX BELOW
• ḓ U+1E13 LATIN SMALL LETTER D WITH CIRCUMFLEX BELOW
• Ḽ U+1E3C LATIN CAPITAL LETTER L WITH CIRCUMFLEX BELOW
• ḽ U+1E3D LATIN SMALL LETTER L WITH CIRCUMFLEX BELOW
• Ṅ U+1E44 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER N WITH DOT ABOVE
• ṅ U+1E45 LATIN SMALL LETTER N WITH DOT ABOVE
• Ṋ U+1E4A LATIN CAPITAL LETTER N WITH CIRCUMFLEX BELOW
• ṋ U+1E4B LATIN SMALL LETTER N WITH CIRCUMFLEX BELOW
• Ṱ U+1E70 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER T WITH CIRCUMFLEX BELOW
• ṱ U+1E71 LATIN SMALL LETTER T WITH CIRCUMFLEX BELOW

References

External links

• Ethnologue entry for Venda
• PanAfrican L10n page on Venda

Software

• 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