Native to Tanzania, Somalia Dialects Mushunguli
Zigula | Native speakers 380,000 (1993–2006) | |
Ethnicity Zigula people, Somali Bantu Language family Niger–Congo
Atlantic–Congo
Benue–Congo
Bantoid
Bantu
Northeast Coast Bantu
Seuta
Zigula ISO 639-3 Either:
ziw – Zigula
xma – Mushunguli | ||
Zigula (Zigua, Chizigua) is a Bantu language of Tanzania and of Somalia, where it is known as Mushunguli (Mushungulu). It is best known for the Mushunguli dialect.
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Mushunguli
Mushunguli is spoken by about 23,000 people from the Bantu ethnic minority of southern Somalia, in Jamaame, Kismayo, Mogadishu, and the Juba River valley.
It shows affinities with other adjacent Bantu varieties. In particular, Mushunguli shares strong lexical and grammatical similarities with the language of the Zigua people who inhabit Tanzania, one of the areas in south-eastern Africa where many Bantu in Somalia are known to have been captured from as slaves during the 19th century. Ethnologue notes that the Mushunguli in Tanzania are the Wazegua.
Many Mushunguli Bantu men also speak as working languages the Afro-Asiatic Maay and Somali languages of their Somali neighbors.
Phonology
There is no official or traditional orthography for Mushunguli. However, spelling practices from related Bantu languages can easily be adopted to render the language with minimal phonetic diacritics.
Consonants
The fricatives [z] and [s] freely vary with [ð] and [θ], respectively.
Tone
Vowel length is not distinctive, but phonetic length is especially associated with falling tones as in chîga 'leg'. The tone system is similar to that of Tanzanian Zigua.