Venda language

Venda, also called Tshivenḓa, is a Bantu language that holds official status in both South Africa and Zimbabwe. Its main speakers are the Venda people (Vhavenḓa), who live in the northern part of South Africa's Limpopo province, along with some Lemba people in South Africa. The language is related to Shona, specifically the Karanga and Kalanga varieties spoken in Southern Africa. Under apartheid, the South African government created the Bantustan of Venda to encompass the region's Venda speakers.

According to the 2011 census, Venda speakers in South Africa are heavily concentrated in the Vhembe district, with 350,000 in Makhado Local Municipality, 370,000 in Thulamela Local Municipality, 35,000 in Musina Local Municipality, and 89,000 in Mutale Local Municipality—totaling 844,000 in that district. Gauteng province is home to 275,000 Venda speakers, while fewer than 10,000 live elsewhere in the country. This brings the total number of Venda speakers in South Africa to 1.2 million, or 2.2% of the population, making it the second smallest minority language in the country after Ndebele, which has 1.1 million speakers. In Zimbabwe, the exact number of Venda speakers is unclear, but it may currently be around one million. They are mostly concentrated in the south of the country, though some have moved to other towns and cities, and a significant number work as migrants in neighboring South Africa.

The Venda writing system uses the Latin alphabet, supplemented by five accented letters. Four dental consonants are marked with a circumflex below (ḓ, ḽ, ṋ, ṱ), and a velar ṅ uses an overdot. Five vowel letters represent seven vowel sounds. The letters C, J, and Q appear only in foreign words and names. Additionally, the sintu writing system Isibheqe Sohlamvu/Ditema tsa Dinoko—known in Venda as Luṱhofunḓeraru lwa Mibvumo—is also used for the language.

In terms of phonology, Venda distinguishes dental sounds (ṱ, ṱh, ḓ, ṋ, ḽ) from alveolar ones (t, th, d, n, l). It also contrasts labiodental f and v with bilabial fh and vh, the latter being slightly rounded. The language has no clicks. As in Zulu and other South African languages, the consonants ph, ṱh, th, and kh are aspirated, while the plain stops p, ṱ, t, and k are ejective. There are five vowel sounds. A labiodental nasal /ɱ/ appears in prenasalised consonants, and the sound [l] is often an allophone of /ɺ/ in free variation and loanwords. Labiovelar sounds can alternate with labiopalatal sounds and may be pronounced as /pkʰ pkʼ bɡ mŋ/. After nasal prefixes, certain consonants (such as /ɸ β s ʃ x h l̪ ɺ r w/) undergo fortition.

Venda has a specified high tone, with unmarked syllables carrying a low tone. A phonetic falling tone occurs only in sequences of more than one vowel or on the penultimate syllable if the vowel is long. Tone patterns exist independently of consonants and vowels, making them word tones. The language follows Meeussen's rule: when a word beginning with a high tone is preceded by another high tone, the initial high tone is lost. This means no two adjacent marked high tones appear in a word, but high tone spreads allophonically to a following low-tone syllable. Only a few tone patterns occur in Venda words—no tone, a single high tone on some syllable, or two non-adjacent high tones.