Herero language

Herero
Otjiherero
Spoken in	Namibia  Botswana
Region	Kunene, Omaheke and Otjozondjupa in Namibia; Ghanzi in Botswana
Ethnicity	Herero, Himba, Mbanderu, Cimba, Kwisi, Twa
Native speakers	237,000 incl. Hakaona, ca. 270,000 incl. Zemba  (2006)
Language family	Niger–Congo Atlantic–Congo Benue–Congo Bantoid Bantu Kavango–Southwest Southwest Bantu Herero
Dialects	Himba Kuvale Zemba (Thimba) Hakawona
Language codes
ISO 639-1	hz
ISO 639-2	her
ISO 639-3	her

person
people	Ovaherero
language	Otjiherero

The Herero language (Otjiherero) is a language of the Bantu family (Niger–Congo group). It is spoken by the Herero people in Namibia (206,000) and Botswana. The total number of speakers in both countries is approximately 237,000.^[1]

Its linguistic distribution covers a zone called Hereroland: this zone is constituted of the region of Omaheke, along with the regions of Otjozondjupa and Kunene. The Himba, who are related to the Herero people, speak a dialect very close to the Herero language. In Windhoek, the capital of Namibia, there exists a considerable minority of hererophones.

Because of missionary Gottlieb Viehe's (1839–1901) translation of the Bible into Herero at the end of the 19th century, the spoken language was transcribed to a script based on the Latin alphabet. Father Peter Heinrich Brincker (1836–1904) translated several theological works and songs.

Herero is taught in Namibian schools both as a native tongue and as a secondary language, and is to be included as a principal material at the University of Namibia. Herero is also one of the six minority languages that are used by the Namibian State Radio (NBC). Gamsberg Macmillan, as of 2008^[update], has published the only dictionary in Herero.

The Hakaona "dialect" is now considered a separate language, as sometimes is Zemba.^[2]

Bibliography

• Brincker, Peter Heinrich (1886, 1964). Wörterbuch und kurzgefasste Grammatik des Otji-Herero. Leipzig (reprint 1964 Ridgwood, NJ: The Gregg Press).
• Hahn, C. Hugo (1857). Grundzüge einer Grammatik des Hereró. Berlin: Verlag von Wilhelm Hertz.
• Lutz, Marten (2006). "Locative inversion in Otjiherero: more on morpho-syntactic variation in Bantu." In: Laura Downing, Lutz Marten & Sabine Zerbian (eds.), Papers in Bantu Grammar, ZAS Papers in Linguistics 43, 97—122.
• Marten, Lutz & Nancy C. Kula (2007). "Morphosyntactic co-variation in Bantu: two case studies." SOAS Working Papers in Linguistics 15.227-238.
• Möhlig, Wilhelm, Lutz Marten & Jekura U. Kavari (2002). A Grammatical Sketch of Herero (Otjiherero). Köln: Köppe (Grammatische Analysen afrikanischer Sprachen; v.19).

References

1. ^ http://www.ethnologue.org/show_language.asp?code=her
2. ^ Bantu Classification, Ehret, 2009.

External links

• Map of Herero language from the LL-Map Project
• Information on Herero language from the MultiTree Project

• Herero language at Ethnologue