Ikalanga or Kalanga is a Bantu language spoken in Botswana by 150,000 people and in Zimbabwe by 700,000 people who are called the BaKalanga. It is a Bantu language known for its extensive phoneme inventory, which includes palatalized, velarized, aspirated, and breathy voiced consonants.
Origins
The Kalanga were cut off from the main concentration of the Shona people by the invading Ndebele. Their speech shows considerable differences from that of the Shona people. Kalanga is, for instance, the only dialect to have the l sound; the rest of the Shona dialects have r only.The language, ikalanga is closely related to the Balobedu-baka-Modjadji group of languages including Shona, Karanga, Zezuru, Venda, Birwa, Tjililima and Shankwe. From this it is believed that they stem from a people who originated from the Limpopo/Drakensburg areas of S/Africa and settled in the Northern part of Botswana and the modern day Zimbabwe.
Bibliography
- Chebanne, A.M. & Rodewald, M.K & Pahlen, K.W. (1995) Ngatikwaleni iKalanga: a manual for writing Kalanga as spoken in Botswana. Gaborone: Botswana Society.
- Mathangwane, Joyce T. (1999) Ikalanga phonetics and phonology: a synchronic and diachronic study. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.
External links
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Zimbabwe
Botswana
