Venda language

Venda, also called Tshivenḓa or Luvenḓa, is a Bantu language and an official language of South Africa. Most Venda speakers live in South Africa, but some speakers live in Zimbabwe. The Venda language is very similar to the Kalanga language, which is spoken in Botswana and Zimbabwe. During the Apartheid era of South Africa, Venda speakers lived in the bantustan of Venda.

Tshivenda
Tshivenḓa
Native to	South Africa, Zimbabwe
Region	Limpopo Province
Native speakers	1.3 million (2011 census) 1.7 million L2 speakers in South Africa (2002)
Language family	Niger–Congo Atlantic–Congo Benue–Congo Southern Bantoid Bantu Southern Bantu Tshivenda
Writing system	Latin (Venda alphabet) Venda Braille
Signed forms	Signed Venda
Official status
Official language in	South Africa Zimbabwe
Language codes
ISO 639-1	ve
ISO 639-2	ven
ISO 639-3	ven
Glottolog	vend1245
Guthrie code	S.20 (S.21)
Linguasphere	99-AUT-b incl. varieties 99-AUT-baa to 99-AUT-bad
Geographical distribution of Tshivenda in South Africa: proportion of the population that speaks Tshivenda at home.   0–20%   20–40%   40–60%   60–80%   80–100%
Geographical distribution of Tshivenda in South Africa: density of Tshivenda home-language speakers.   <1 /km²   1–3 /km²   3–10 /km²   10–30 /km²   30–100 /km²   100–300 /km²   300–1000 /km²   1000–3000 /km²   >3000 /km²

Venda is a language in the Bantu branch of the Niger-Congo language family.

Venda is spoken by about 666,000 people in the northern part of South Africa's Limpopo Province. Around 84,000 people in Zimbabwe also speak the language.

Writing

The Venda language uses the Latin alphabet. It has five (5) extra accented letters. Four consonants have a circumflex below the letter (ḓ, ḽ, ṋ, ṱ) and one consonant has an overdot (ṅ).

The Venda alphabet

A a	B b	D d	Ḓ ḓ	E e	F f
G g	H h	I i	K k	L l	Ḽ ḽ
M m	N n	Ṋ ṋ	Ṅ ṅ	O o	P p
R r	S s	T t	Ṱ ṱ	U u	V v
W w	X x	Y y	Z z

The letters C, J, and Q are used when writing foreign words and names.

letter(s)	value(s) in IPA	notes
a	[a]
b	[b]
bv	[b̪v]
bw	[bɣw] or [bj]	Varies by dialect
d	[d]
dz	[d͡z]
dzh	[d͡ʒ]	Like the English "j"
dzw	[d͡zw]
ḓ	[d̪]
e	[ɛ], [e]
f	[f]
fh	[ɸ]
g	[ɡ]
h	[ɦ], [h]	Pronounced h] before e.
hw	[ɣw]
i	[i]
k	[kˀ]
kh	[kʰ]
khw	[kʰw]
l	[ɭ]
ḽ	[l̪]
m	[m], [m̩]	M is syllabic, [m̩], when the next syllable begins with m.
n	[n], [n̩]	N is syllabic, when the next syllable begins with n.
ng	[ŋɡ]
ny	[ɲ]
nz	[nd͡z]
ṋ	[n̪]
ṅ	[ŋ]
ṅw	[ŋw]
o	[ɔ], [o]
p	[pˀ]
ph	[pʰ]
pf	[p̪f]
pfh	[p̪fʰ]
r	[ɾ]
s	[s]
sh	[ʃ]
sw	[ʂ]
t	[tˀ]
th	[tʰ]
ts	[t͡s]
tsh	[t͡ʃʰ]
tsw	[t͡sw]
ty	[c]
ṱ	[t̪]
ṱh	[t̪h]
u	[u]
v	[v]
vh	[β]
w	[w]
x	[x]	Like the ch in Scottish 'loch.'
y	[j]
z	[z]
zh	[ʒ]
zw	[ʐ]

Unicode

The extra letters have these Unicode names

• Ḓ U+1E12 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER D WITH CIRCUMFLEX BELOW
• ḓ U+1E13 LATIN SMALL LETTER D WITH CIRCUMFLEX BELOW
• Ḽ U+1E3C LATIN CAPITAL LETTER L WITH CIRCUMFLEX BELOW
• ḽ U+1E3D LATIN SMALL LETTER L WITH CIRCUMFLEX BELOW
• Ṅ U+1E44 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER N WITH DOT ABOVE
• ṅ U+1E45 LATIN SMALL LETTER N WITH DOT ABOVE
• Ṋ U+1E4A LATIN CAPITAL LETTER N WITH CIRCUMFLEX BELOW
• ṋ U+1E4B LATIN SMALL LETTER N WITH CIRCUMFLEX BELOW
• Ṱ U+1E70 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER T WITH CIRCUMFLEX BELOW
• ṱ U+1E71 LATIN SMALL LETTER T WITH CIRCUMFLEX BELOW

Other websites

• Ethnologue entry for Venda
• Tshivenda - South African Languages
• Batho Portal Welcome page in Venda Archived 2006-10-12 at the Wayback Machine
• PanAfrican L10n page on Venda

Computer programs

• Spell checker for OpenOffice.org and Mozilla Archived 2007-01-14 at the Wayback Machine, OpenOffice.org Archived 2007-03-24 at the Wayback Machine, Mozilla Firefox web-browser Archived 2007-02-10 at the Wayback Machine, and Mozilla Thunderbird email program Archived 2007-03-24 at the Wayback Machine in Venda
• Translate.org.za Archived 2007-01-14 at the Wayback Machine Project to translate Free and Open Source Software into all the official languages of South Africa including Venda
• Keyboard with extra venda characters Archived 2007-01-06 at the Wayback Machine