Kimbundu


Kimbundu, a Bantu language which has sometimes been called Mbundu or North Mbundu, is the second-most-widely-spoken Bantu language in Angola.
It is the native language of 3.728 million people, with its speakers mostly concentrated in the north-west of the country, notably in the Bengo, Luanda, Icolo e Bengo, Cuanza Norte, Cuanza Sul, and the Malanje provinces. It is spoken by the Ambundu.

Phonology

Consonants

Allophones:
and are allophones of /p/ and /b/, respectively, before /a/ and /u/. The phoneme /l/ is phonetically a flap , a voiced plosive or its palatalized version when before the front high vowel /i/. In the same way, the alveolars /s/, /z/ and /n/ are palatalized to , and , respectively, before . There may be an epenthesis of after /ŋ/ in word medial positions, thus creating a phonetic cluster in a process of fortition.
There is long distance nasal harmony, in which /l/ is realized as if the previous morphemes contain /m/ or /n/, but not prenasalized stops.

Vowels

There are two contrasting tones: a high and a low tone. There is also a downstep in cases of tonal sandhi.

Vowel harmony

There is vowel harmony in two groups that applies only for verbal morphology. In some morphemes, vowels may be consistently deleted to avoid a hiatus.

Kimbundu alphabet

Consonants
B D F G H J K L M N P S T V W X Y Z
Vowels
A E I O U

Loans

European Portuguese

There is a small number of words of Kimbundu origin and many of those are indirect loans, borrowed via Angolan Portuguese.
The examples generally understood by most or all speakers of Angolan and European Portuguese include
bué,
cota
mambo

Conjugation

Conjugating the verb to be in the present:
Eme ngalaI am
Eie uala / Eye uala / Eie wala / Eye walaYou are
Muene uala / Muene walaHe or she is
Etu tuala / Etu twalaWe are
Enu nuala / Enu nwalaYou are
Ene alaThey are

Conjugating the verb to have in the present :
Eme ngala niI have
Eie / Eye uala niYou have
Muene uala niHe or she has
Etu tuala niWe have
Enu nuala niYou have
Ene ala niThey have