Kuvale: A Bantu language of southwestern Angola

Abstract This paper uses historical-comparative approaches in combination with quantitative methods to analyse data from a survey of varieties of the Bantu languages Herero and Kuvale spoken by ethnically diverse groups from southwestern Angola. We assess the status and position of the underdocumented “Kuvale” variety in relation to its closest geographic neighbours, and address questions about the history of the area. We find that Kuvale is lexically differentiated from its closest relatives Herero, Wambo and Nyaneka-Nkhumbi and should probably be considered a language in its own right. Within the lexicon and phoneme inventories of the surveyed varieties, no obvious indications of a substrate were found, including in data collected among the formerly Kwadi-speaking Kwepe, and among the Kwisi and Twa foragers, who have been hypothesized to constitute a remnant layer of non-Bantu, non-Khoisan foragers in the Namib desert.