Chokwe language

Chokwe
Chokwe
Person	Kacôkwe
People	Tucôkwe
Language	Ucôkwe (Wuchokwe)

Chokwe
Chokwe
Ucôkwe (Wuchokwe)
Native to	Angola, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Zambia
Ethnicity	Chokwe people
Native speakers	(2.5 million cited 1990–2018)
Language family	Niger–Congo? Atlantic–Congo Volta-Congo Benue–Congo Bantoid Southern Bantoid Bantu (Zone K) Chokwe–Luchazi (K.10) Chokwe; ; ; ; ; ; ; ;
Official status
Official language in	Angola (national language)
Regulated by	Instituto de Línguas Nacionais
Language codes
ISO 639-3	cjk
Glottolog	chok1245
Guthrie code	K.11

Chokwe (also known as Batshokwe, Ciokwe, Kioko, Kiokwe, Quioca, Quioco, Shioko, Tschiokloe or Tshokwe^[3]) is a Bantu language spoken by the Chokwe people of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Angola and Zambia. It is recognised as a national language of Angola, where half a million people were estimated to have spoken it in 1991; another half a million speakers lived in the Congo in 1990, and some 20,000 in Zambia in 2010.^[1] It is used as a lingua franca in eastern Angola.

Writing system

Angola's Instituto de Línguas Nacionais (National Languages Institute) has established spelling rules for Chokwe with a view to facilitate and promote its use.^[4]

Chokwe is written with a Latin-based orthography that has been promoted for literacy and formal use across Chokwe-speaking areas; orthographic conventions (spelling of vowels, tone marking in linguistic works, and representation of palatal/velar contrasts) follow standards used in language-planning materials and educational primers for the language.^[5]

In addition to the Latin orthography, Chokwe cultural practice historically used visual mnemonic systems such as lusona (sand-drawing diagrams) to record knowledge, proverbs and problem-solving sequences; while lusona is not an alphabetic script, it has been studied as a complementary, non-linear means of transmission that supplements oral and written forms of Chokwe knowledge.^[6]

Phonology

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i		u
Close-mid	e		o
Open-mid	ɛ		ɔ
Open		a ~ ɑ

Vowels may also be heard as nasalized when preceding nasal consonants.

Consonants

		Labial	Alveolar	Post- alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Stop	voiceless	p	t		(c)	k
	voiced	b	d		(ɟ)	g
	aspirated	pʰ	tʰ			kʰ
	prenasal vd.	ᵐb	ⁿd		(ᶮɟ)	ᵑɡ
	prenasal vl.	ᵐp
Affricate	voiceless	p͡f	t͡f	t͡ʃ
	voiced		t͡v	d͡ʒ
	prenasal		ⁿd͡v	ⁿd͡ʒ
Fricative	voiceless	f	s	ʃ			h
	voiced	v	z	ʒ
	prenasal		ⁿz	ⁿʒ
Nasal		m	n		ɲ
Approximant	lateral		l		ʎ
Approximant	plain				j	w

Affricate sounds /t͡ʃ, d͡ʒ, ⁿd͡ʒ/ may also be pronounced as palatal stops [c, ɟ, ᶮɟ].

Tones

Chokwe has three tones as /v́/, /v̀/, and /v̂/.^[7]^[8]

Examples


English	Chokwe
Good Morning -Response	Menekenu -Mwane
See you	Ndo shimbu yikehe
Goodbye	Salenuho
What is your name?	Jina lie yena iya?
My name is ____	Jina liami ___

^[9]

References

^ ^a ^b Chokwe at Ethnologue (25th ed., 2022)
^ Jouni Filip Maho, 2009. New Updated Guthrie List Online
^ Nurse, Derek; Philippson, Gérard; Bostoen, Koen; Van de Velde, Mark (2019). The Bantu languages (Second ed.). London. ISBN 9781317628682.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
^ "Ethnologue report for Angola". 2012-09-23. Archived from the original on 2012-09-23. Retrieved 2024-05-23.
^ "Chokwe language and pronunciation". Omniglot. Retrieved 2025-08-09.
^ "Sona – Tchokwe sand drawings". Atlas of Endangered Alphabets. Retrieved 2025-08-09.
^ Ualhanga, Xavier Chipuleno (2017). Antroponímia na Língua Cokwe (Lunda-Norte) [Anthroponymy in the Cokwe Language (Lunda-Norte)] (Master's thesis) (in Portuguese). Universidade NOVA de Lisboa. hdl:10362/21952.
^ Martins, João Vicente (1990). Elementos de Gramática de Utchokwe [Utchokwe Grammar Elements] (in Portuguese). Lisboa: Instituto de Investigação Científica Tropical. pp. 25–32.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: publisher location (link)
^ Akindipe, Omotola. "Learn Chokwe (Greetings and Introduction)". Learn Chokwe. Archived from the original on 2021-05-09.