Fwe language

The Fwe language, also known as Chifwe, is a Bantu language spoken by the Fwe people (Mafwe or Bafwe) in Namibia and Zambia. It is closely related to the Subia language, Chisubia, and is one of several Bantu languages that feature click consonants.

Silozi is used as the formal language in official, educational, and media contexts.^[3][4]

Fwe is part of the Bantu language family, a sub-branch of the Niger-Congo family. Maho (2009) classifies it as K.402, sharing the K.40 category with Ikuhane and Totela.^[5] Bohoe (2009) classifies it as Bantu Botatwe, along with Toka, Leya, Ila, Tonga, Sala, Lenje, Lundwe, and Soli.^[6][7]

Main phonological differences between Zambian and Namibian Fwe, as noted by both the speakers and seen in the data:^[8]

Morphological differences between Zambian and Namibian Fwe:

Fwe syllables consist, at most, of a consonant, a glide, and a vowel.

Consonant inventory of Fwe^[9]

		Bilabial	Dental/ Labiodental	Alveolar	Postalveolar/ Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Click	plain		ᵏǀ ᶢǀ
	prenasalized		ⁿ̥ǀ ⁿǀ
Nasal		m		n	ɲ	ŋ
Stop	voiceless	p		t		k
	voiced	b		d		ɡ
	prenasalized	ᵐp ᵐb		ⁿt ⁿd		ᵑk ᵑɡ
Fricative	voiceless		f	s	ʃ		h
	voiced	β	v	z	ʒ
	prenasalized		ᶬf ᶬv	ⁿs ⁿz	ⁿʃ
Affricate	plain				tʃ
	prenasalized				ⁿtʃ ⁿdʒ
Tap				ɾ
Glide					j	w

• The plosives /p b d g/ are considered peripheral phonemes, as they are relatively infrequent in the lexicon. They are not reflexes of *p, *b, *d and *g as reconstructed for Proto-Bantu, but mainly appear in loanwords.^[10]
• Though there are numerous cases where /h/ contrasts with zero, i.e. where /h/ can-not be omitted, [h] is also often used as an epenthetic consonant, in which case it freely commutes with [w], [j] and zero. Phonemic /h/, on the other hand, cannot commute with a glide nor can it be dropped.^[11]

Fwe has five contrastive vowel phonemes: /ɪ ʊ ɛ ɔ a/. Vowels contrast in length, as seen in the minimal pairs below:^[12]

The placement and proximity of vowels in Fwe influences tonal processes. Vowels placed at the beginning of a word are known as augments (glossed as AUG) and final vowels are those placed at the end of a word (glossed as FV). Tone is also affected by whether a vowel is lengthened or deleted, as well as how sounds and words are positioned together within and across morphemic boundaries.

Fwe is a tonal language, as are most languages within the Bantu family. Pitch differences on the vowel contribute to differing meanings. This contrastive tonal system is demonstrated by the existence of minimal pairs:

Fwe has two underlying tones, high and low. At the surface level, these tones may be articulated as high, low, falling, or downstepped high tone.^[13] Specific tone usage in Fwe, namely the underlying high tone, is subject to several processes which affect its placement relative to other tones within morphemes or phrases. These tonal processes determine whether high or low tones are used in succession.^[14]

Tones in Fwe occur on the mora of words. Vowel combinations consist of either one (for short vowels) or two morae (for long or lengthened vowels).^[15] Tonal processes will be affected by the overall vowel environment as well as morae.

There is grammatical necessity to correct tonal placement. Tones will impact many elements of Fwe language, including tense-aspect-mood marking, which utilizes high floating or "melodic tone." Placing high tones on augments, as well as on specific areas of inflected verb stems, will impart TAM information.^[16] Additionally, subject markers prefixed to verbs in main clauses will have a low tone, while subject markers prefixed to verbs for relative clauses will have a high tone. These subject markers are otherwise identical in their syntactic, vowel and consonant makeup.^[17]

There are 19 noun classes, numbered one to eighteen, including class 1a. These are marked as prefixes on the noun. Adjectives take on the augment and prefix when in agreement with a noun. A table of noun classes is given by Gunnink (2018):^[18]

There are four distance distinctions, or series, within demonstratives. Possessives can be expressed as suffixes on the noun they modify. Tense, aspect, negation, modality, subject, object, locatives, and spatial deixis can all be marked on the verb. Subject marking on the verb is obligatory. The general verb structure is pre-initial - subject - post-initial - object - root - derivational suffixes - pre-final - final vowel - clitic.

Fwe follows an SVO, or Subject Verb Object order. Constituents can be moved to the front of a clause to be marked for topic, or to the end to be marked for definiteness. An example of the word order can be found below:^[19]

Fwe Causative constructions are constructed through inderect causation semantically and use a complex predicate strategy. There is overt coding on the verb with a dedicated causative affix being added to indicate causality.^[20]