Kwangali (K33)

Abstract This chapter focuses on (Ru-)Kwangali (K33), which is spoken in the Kavango river area of Angola (Cuangar to Calai) and Namibia (Nkurenkuru to Rundu), with about 175,000 speakers in Namibia. The chapter offers details on the language including its history, relationship to other Kavango languages, social status, use (e.g. in schools), language standardization, and promotion. Linguistic studies and published sources that deal with Kwangali are also discussed. The chapter presents original Kwangali data that are the basis of the phonological and morphological description covering vowel copying, vowel harmony, nasal harmony and coalescence, on the one hand, and noun classes, agreement patterns, demonstratives, adnominals, and possessives, on the other. Verb structure, including contrasting TAM positions, adverbs, and ideophones are also discussed. The chapter concludes with examples of terminology development and derivational patterns, offering the most comprehensive and up-to-date description of the language.