KiBantu

KiBantu is a zonal language that is meant to act as a potential lingua franca for the Bantu-speaking peoples of Sub-Saharan Africa. Though it is highly influenced by Swahili, it is slightly simplified and incorporates Bantu vocabulary of disparate origins.

Phonology
KiBantu's phonology is principally derived from that of Proto-Bantu, although sound correspondences aren't always regular. Like most Bantu languages kiBantu is tonal, though the tones intentionally do not distinguish many minimal pairs.

Vowels
KiBantu, like Swahili, Shona, and Zulu, has a simple five vowel system, as opposed to the seven vowel system of some modern Bantu languages and Proto-Bantu. In addition, there is no contrastive vowel length. The mid vowels /e/ and /o/ may be realized as close-mid and open-mid, and may be pronounced according to each speaker's preference. There are no diphthongs in KiBantu. All vowel sequences are permitted, and each vowel constitutes a separate syllable. Sequences of two of the same vowels, such as /aa/ or /ee/ are rarely found in word roots, but can often be found in inflected words.

Consonants
KiBantu has twenty basic consonant sounds, and an additional thirteen consonants if prenasalized consonants are counted separately.
 * Prenasalised consonants are consonants that are preceded by a brief homorganic nasal. In most cases the homorganic nasal takes on the same place of articulation as the consonant is precedes, though in orthography this is only reflected in the labial consonants, and all other instances of the homorganic nasal are written as ⟨n⟩.
 * When modified by the homorganic nasal, the approximants change in predictable ways. /l/ has no prenasalised counterpart, so it becomes /ⁿd/, as seen in nde, an inflected form of -le "long". /w/ similarly becomes /ᵐb/. As an exception, when /j/ undergoes prenasalisation, instead of becoming a prenasalised consonant it becomes the palatal nasal /ɲ/.
 * The nasals /m/, /n/, and /ɲ/, as well as /h/, do not change at all when prenasalised.
 * The velar nasal [ŋ] does not occur as a separate phoneme, but as a variant of the homorganic nasal before the velar consonants /k/ and /g/.
 * /h/ is almost never found in words of native Bantu origin.
 * /l/ and /r/ do not contrast in native words and most loanwords, as the phoneme /l/ is almost always used. However, /r/ can occur and is written as such in proper names such as kinyarwanda "Rwanda language".

Tone
KiBantu has two tones, high and low. High tone is indicated with an acute accent, while the low tone is unmarked. The low tone is generally treated as a default, and is generally considered an absence of tone. Tones in KiBantu do not play any kind of role in distinguishing grammatical features; they simply exist to distinguish similar words. Tone does not have to be indicated in more casual writing, as there are not enough minimal pairs to make a text difficult to understand if tone is not written. However, this article will mark tone when applicable.

Phonotactics
The syllable structure in KiBantu is (N)(C)(G)V. The nucleus is always a vowel, and cannot be a syllabic /m/ like in many Bantu languages. Though prenasalized consonants are treated as one consonant phonetically, the homorganic nasal that precedes a consonant can be considered a separate part of the onset. Additionally, one of the glides, /j/ or /w/, may follow most consonants in the onset. Maximal syllable structure can be seen monosyllabic words such as ngwe /ᵑɡwe/ "leopard" and mbwá /ᵐbwá/ "dog".

Orthography
KiBantu is written phonetically with the Latin alphabet. Most letters correspond to one sound, but there are two digraphs discounting prenasalized sounds: ⟨sh⟩, and ⟨ny⟩. The letters ⟨q⟩, ⟨r⟩, and ⟨x⟩ do not occur in most words, however they can occur in proper names. The English approximations listed below are not meant to indicate the exact pronunciations of the letters, but to serve as a guide for English speakers.

Word Formation
Approximately 75% of KiBantu's lexicon is of native Bantu origin. Of that percentage, 77% is traceable back to a reconstructable Proto-Bantu root, while 33% comes from words of native Bantu origin that are not reconstructable as Proto-Bantu, or words that were derived from other words of Bantu origin. The remaining 25% of KiBantu's lexicon is of foreign origin. Words of English origin make up the bulk of this, at 60% of loanwords, while Arabic contributes 24%. Words from other languages such as Persian, French, Portuguese, and various Indic languages make up the remainder of loanwords in KiBantu.

Derivation from Proto-Bantu
In many cases, there are regular or semi-regular correspondences between Proto-Bantu phonemes and KiBantu sounds. These correspondences are often complicated by two factors. The first may be when there are only a few Bantu languages that exhibit a cognate, but all of the languages share the same divergent sound change. The second is that a divergent form may be borrowed to prevent homophony.