Mwani language


The Mwani language is a Bantu language spoken on the coast of the Cabo Delgado Province of Mozambique, including the Quirimbas Islands. Although it shares high lexical similarity with Swahili, it is not intelligible with it. It is spoken by around 120,000 people. Speakers of Kimwani also use Portuguese,, Swahili and Makhuwa language. Kiwibo, the dialect of the Island of Ibo is the prestige dialect. Kimwani is also called Mwani and Ibo. According to Anthony P. Grant: Kimwani of northern Mozambique appears to be the result of imperfect shift towards Swahili several centuries ago by speakers of Makonde, and Arends et al. suggest it might turn out to be a Makonde–Swahili mixed language.

Name

The Name "Kimwani" comes from the word "Mwani", meaning "beach". The prefix "Ki" means the language of, so "Kimwani" literally means "language of the beach".

Sounds

Kimwani is unusual among sub-Saharan languages in having lost the feature of lexical tone. It does not have the penultimate stress typical of Swahili; it has movable pitch accent. Labialization of consonants and palatalization of r are frequent. Nasalization of vowels occurs only before a nasal consonant n followed by a consonant.

Vowels

Kimwani has five vowel phonemes:,,,, and, that is: its vowels are close to those of Spanish and Latin. It does not have a distinction of closed and open mid vowels typical of Portuguese, French or Italian.
The pronunciation of the phoneme /i/ stands between International Phonetic Alphabet and . Vowels are never reduced, regardless of stress. The vowels are pronounced as follows:
Kimwani has no diphthongs; in vowel combinations, each vowel is pronounced separately.

Consonants

Two symbols in a table cell denote the voiceless and voiced consonant, respectively.
LabialAlveolarPalatalVelarGlottal
Nasalmnɲŋ
Plosives and
affricates		p, bt, dtʃ, dʒk, g
Fricativesf, vs, zʃh
Trillr
Approximantswlj

Orthography

Kimwani can be spelled in three ways: using orthography similar to Swahili, using a slightly modified spelling system used in Mozambique schools or using a Portuguese-based spelling. Here are the differences:
Swahili language spellingModified spellingPortuguese spellingTranslation
chalacalatchalafinger
juwajuwadjuaSun
kitabukitabuquitabobook
ng'ombeng'ombengombecow
nyokanyokanhocasnake
fisifisifissihyena
mezamezamesatable
kushangakushangacuxangato admire
wakatiwakatiuacatetime
kipyakipyaquípianew
sukilisukilisuquilesugar
ufuufuufoflour

Numbers

moja, mbili, natu, n’né, tano
sita, saba, nane, kenda
kumi, kumi na moja,kumi na mbili
Ishirini, thelathini, arubaini, hamsini
sitini, sabini, themanini, tisini
mia, mia mbili
Elfu elfu mbili