Noun Classes (Nyanja)

Previously I broke down Bemba noun classes. Now let's look at Nyanja. Again, different sources disagree in the amount of noun classes and how their plurals are formed: this is the inevitable downside of grammar and linguistics by the outsider, rather than a native speaker (most of the foundational texts I refer to are written by missionaries in the beginning of the 20th century).

According to A Practical Manual of the Nyanja Language by Alexander Hetherwick, Nyanja has eight classes, in which all nouns can fit (although there are some obvious shortcuts to his method, because certain classes include nouns with particular prefixes and others with no prefixes at all). But take this as a shorthand to using nouns, and realize that speaking without using the proper prefix to add to verbs and adjectives (for example: munthu unka instead of the correct munthu anka) does not destroy intelligibility. Because noun classes can be complex and sentence structuring daunting, particularly when speaking, I see my knowledge of them as constantly evolving, and requiring constant practice.

Here's a breakdown of the seven noun classes:

Class	Description	Singular	Plural
1	Names, relationships, occupations, offices	m, mwa, mu	a
2	Impersonal objects	m, mwa, mu	mi
3	Generally abstract nouns	u	ma
4	Nouns with n- and nasal prefixes	n, mb, mf, mph, ng'	None
5	Ch- words (things)	ch-	z-
6	Nouns without a prefix	None	ma
7	Diminutives	ka	ti
8	Locatives	ku, pa, mu	None

Examples:

Class 1

munthu, a person, pl. anthu

mkazi, a woman, pl. akazi

mwamuna, a man, pl. amuna

Class 2

mtengo, a tree, pl. mitengo

mudzi, a village, pl. midzi

mpando, a chair, pl. mipando

Class 3

ufulu, freedom

ufumu, chieftainship

ukulu, greatness

Class 4

nchito, work

mbvula, rain

ng'ona, a crocodile

Class 5

chiko, a cup, pl. ziko

chakudia, food, pl. zakudia

chipata, gate, pl. zipata

Class 6

bwato, a boat, pl. mabwato

khoswe, a rat, pl. makhoswe

phiri, a mountain, pl. maphiri

Class 7

kamwana, little child, pl. tiana

kachiko, little cup, pl. tiziko

kamtengo, little tree, pl. timtengo

Class 8

kukonda, love

pakati, the middle

m'maso, the face

Greetings

Situational Greetings
So let's leave grammar and structure for a bit, and look at some common greetings. Zambian languages are interesting in that they have common greetings and responses, but almost any verb can be turned into a greeting. They're called situational greetings. Let's look at Bemba:

Mwabombeni.

This is the command form of ukubomba (to work) with an added personal prefix mu+a, which becomes mwa-. So instead of commanding someone to work, you are commenting on them working in a polite way; this is a form of greeting when you find someone working, or greet them after noon, presuming that some work has been accomplished in the day. It literally means "You are working". The response to this, as any greeting, is: Eya, mukwai (yes, sir).

Here's some more:

Mwashibukeni. (You have woken up)
Mwalileni. (You are enjoying [food])
Mwatandaleni. (You are visiting someone)
Mwaiseni. (You have arrived)

Response to all: Eya, mukwai (or, in the "deep Bemba" of Northern Province: Endita, mukwai; or, in Lala: Eya, mwane)

Obviously this doesn't make sense in English: to walk up to someone and comment on what they are doing. But it's a respectful way in Zambian culture to greet someone. In addition, it can be expanded into a question:

Mwashibuka shani? (How have you woken up?)
Mwalileni? (Are you enjoying food? [Are you eating well?])
Mwabomba shani? (How are you working?)

Responses to these differ depending on your condition; in Zambian culture it is typical and expected to respond honestly: Nabomba bwino (I am working well) or Nabomba panono panono (I am working slowly [not working very well]).

How are you?
Now for the standard greeting, inquiring on one's general state. This is useful to know in different languages if you travel around Zambia (or Africa in general). Here's ones that I know, with their responses, as well as how to return the phrase:

English: How are you?
I am good. And you?

Bemba: Muli shani (mukwai)?
Ndifye bwino. Nga imwe?

Nyanja: Muli bwanji?
Ndili bwino. Kaya inu?

Tonga (Southern Zambia): Muli buti?
Ndikabotu. Chita ndwie?

Mambwe (Northern Zambia, Bemba dialect): Muli ooli?
Ningo sile.

Verbs (Bemba and Nyanja)

Bemba
Creating phrases with verbs in Bemba (and other Bantu languages) is like building structures out of blocks: it can be precarious, putting the right blocks together to indicate an action, its actor, the time in which it occurs, and other aspects. It isn't quite like conjugation, and the final construction is called a verb-form.

All verb-forms consist of a root, commonly mono-syllabic, combined with one or more prefixes and suffixes. (Shoeffer, A Grammar of the Bemba Language)

Let's run this through with an example. Take the verb ukucita (to do/to make). The uku- is the infinitive, and is attached to all verbs. If we take the infinitive off, we're left with:

cita (pronounced chita)

Now comes the personal prefix. For subjects which are found within the noun classes (see previous post), the class prefix can be added. Or, we can use a pronoun, in this case n- (I); as a prefix, it's added to the beginning of the form:

n + cita (I do)

At this point, the form is incomplete because it lacks a tense-sign, and indicator of when the action is happening. We can add -a-, or the present tense-sign, in between the verb and the personal prefix:

n + a + cita = nacita (I do)

Or we can replace it with -le-, the present continual tense-sign, which changes its meaning:

n + le + cita = ndecita (I am doing)

Note the combination of the consonants n and l forms a nd sound.

To turn the form into its negative, the addition of the prefix ta- is used in all cases except for the first person (mufwaya (you want) becomes tamufwaya (you don't want)). In the first person, -sha- is added directly after the personal prefix (I know this sounds confusing, but it adds a nice flourish when it's spoken):

n + sha + le + cita = nshalecita (I am not doing)

In some cases tense-signs become suffixes, most notably in the past tense (-ile and -ine); this is a concept I'm familiar with but still have difficulty with. Because verb forms are constructed, rather than conjugated, it takes some work to decode them as you hear them (because you have to deconstruct the personal prefix, tense, and the verb itself in order to determine its meaning).

Nyanja
How different is this in Nyanja? The structure is the same, but there are considerable differences in vocabulary. In this case, the verb cita is the same (as is the infinitive uku-), but the personal prefix for the first person is ndi-:

ndi + cita = ndicita (I do)

In this case no additions are needed for the present tense. The tense-sign (what Hetherwick calls the "particle of time") is -li- for the continual tense (or incomplete tense) to denote the action has not been completed, and is still in the process:

ndi + li + cita = ndilicita (I am doing)

To negate a verb form, si- is added as a prefix. For example:

si + ndi + li + cita = sindilicita (I am not doing)

Some more examples of verb forms in Nyanja (since I am learning the language and am taking every opportunity to play with it):

ti + na + zengereza = tinazengereza (we were late)

Nyumba si + dza + gwa = Nyumba sidzagwa (the house will not fall)

mu + li + lumba atate wanu = mulilumba atate wanu (you are thanking your father)

Noun classes, a brief introduction

For more clearer reference, I'll label posts by language. It may be easier to write about grammar, vocabulary, and syntax in a single tongue, rather than reflecting on the differences between the three. So this post is specifically about Bemba.

Noun Classes and Concord

Bantu languages are described as noun-centered, the noun occupying the primary focus of the sentence or phrase. Because there is no verb conjugation, but instead verb construction, the noun classes tend to be the most difficult part of the language. I still struggle with them.

A class is a group of nouns which share a common prefix and are related in some ways, with significant exceptions. Different authors will disagree in how nouns are grouped, as well. Whereas verbs have agreement, nouns have concord - in the case of Bantu languages, all words related to the noun will adopt a prefix in agreement (or concord). For some in-depth linguistic analysis of this, see Multiple Agreement, Concord and Case Checking in Bantu by Brent Henderson.

An example of concord:

Umuntu mutali uleya ku mushi.
The tall man (umuntu) is going to the village.

Compare with:

Iconi citali cileya ku mushi.
The tall bird (iconi) is going to the village.

I like to think of noun classes and concord as endowing Bantu languages with a type of reverse rhyming system - the entire sentence is changed with the simple change of the noun (a change which would be simple in English, but is demonstrably more significant in Bemba).

Different grammar analyses have different approaches to grouping and categorizing the noun classes. I'll adopt Mann's because it is perhaps the most straightforward, grouping classes by their plurals (each class has a distinct plural form). In this system, there are 9 noun classes. The format I learnt involved 18 noun classes, but included the annoying feature of referencing other classes for plural (for example all ci- nouns become fi- in plural, while li-, ku-, and bu- all turn into ma-, while n- has no separate plural).

Here's the always daunting noun class. I'll attempt to break it down in future posts.

Please note noun prefixes add a vowel when at the beginning of the sentence (mu- becomes umu-, ka- becomes aka-, with the exception of n-, which stays the same). For brevity's sake, I'll keep the prefixes in their short form.

Class	Singular	Plural
1	mu	ba
2	mu	mi
3	n, lu	n
4	ci	fi
5	li, ku, bu, lu	ma
6	ka	tu
7	bu	bu
8	ku	ku
9	ku, mu, pa	ku, mu, pa

Overwhelming of course, and it gets worse, when adjective and verb concords are added, with the very hazy  definitions of what words belong in each noun class. But this is a brief introduction, and I'll leave it at that.

Sources
Mann, Michael. An Outline of Icibemba Grammar. Lusaka, Zambia: Bookworld Publishers. 1977.

Basic Pronunciation

First of all, a commentary on writing and reading Bantu languages. The first grammars and dictionaries were written by Western missionaries; very few African languages have writing systems, and most of them are found in Northern African societies. So each attempt at recording a Bantu language using the Latin script may differ in its approach and use of special characters. In this blog I will try to restrict myself to normal characters and offer explanations where needed.


The vowels


The vowels of these three languages (Bemba, Lala, Nyanja) are shared, and are pronounced as follows:

a = as a in far
e = as a in fare
i = as ee in see
o = as o in sore
u = as oo in root

The consonants


Most consonants are pronounced the same or similar English. Some are non existent (r, q, v, and x) and z is used in Nyanja but not Bemba nor Lala. Here are some special pronunciations:

-b  except when following an m, is like a v except the lips are together like an English b (Mann calls this a "voiced bilabial fricative phonetic" if you're interested)

-l   is generally interchangable with r, and pronouncing either sounds like a combination of both, similar to Japanese

-h  only occurs in sh or ch


-c   is pronounced like ch in church

-ng   has the sound of ng in singer. It is sometimes seen as η or ñ.

(Sources: Hetherwick, A Practical Manual of the Nyanja Language; Mann, An Outline of Icibemba Grammar; Hoch, Bemba Pocket Dictionary)

Fwayeni Google

Google.co.zm is now offered in four Zambian languages: Bemba, Nyanja, Lozi, and Timbuka. An article in the Lusaka Times reports on this, as well as the high connectivity costs of Zambia related to other nearby African countries.


The search button is fwayeni, a polite command derived from fwaya: to look for; seek; want; wish; fetch; intend; desire.

The languages of this blog

Bantu is a group of some 500 languages within the Benue-Congo branch of the Niger-Congo language family (also see this interactive tree of the languages). The most popularly spoken are Rundi, Rwanda, Shona, Xhosa, Zulu, and Swahili.

The Bemba Language, or iciBemba, is a Bantu language spoken mostly in north-eastern Zambia, and to a lesser extent in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Tanzania, and Botswana. It is spoken by almost 4 million people, mostly the Bemba people and related ethnic groups. BaBemba means the people of the lake, referring to Lake Bangweulu in Northern Zambia, now the Luapula Province.

Lala-Bisa is a language closely related to Bemba but not considered a dialect of. It has between 200,000-500,000 speakers in Central Zambia (source: MultiTree). Due to the proximity to the DRC, Lala is also spoken there.

Nyanja/Chewa, or ciNyanja/ciChewa, is the national language of Malawi and the tongue spoken in the Eastern Province of Zambia and the capital city, Lusaka. Nyanja differs from Chewa in its influence from Bemba and English; in fact, Lusaka Nyanja is beginning to be considered its own dialect. CiNyanja also refers to a lake, in this case Lake Malawi.