Fangwezi

Welcome to the language of the Fangwezi language. This language is very closely related to the Fangwa language but is often considered a dialect by the Fangwa language although the Fangwezi themselves see their language as separate and point to the differences between the two languages. Fangwezi has less influence from Afrihili then Fangwa and the vocabulary has more in common with Entesi. The Fangwezi is also head final like Entesi but unlike Fangwa, Fangwezi also has the distinction between the inclusive and the exclusive first person plural. The counting system works like Entesi but the other aspects of Fangwezi like the verb conjugation and the noun class system are similar to Fangwa. There is some mutual intelligibility between the two languages although the Fangwa report a better understanding of Fangwezi then the other way around. Linguists consider the languages as closely related but the Fangwezi deny the close relationship because they don't like the claim of the Fangwa that Fangwezi is a mere dialect of Fangwa.

The Fangwezi territory is located to the south of Fangwa-land and the two territories share a border and the Fangwa would like to include the Fangwezi to their country because only then they would have the biggest territory, bigger than their rivals the Entesi and they would then possess a lot of cattle because the Fangwezi are expert sheperds posessing lots of sheep, goats and cows and making lots of dairy product from these animals.

But the Fangwezi are very proud and stubborn people and they insist that their language is a branch on its own although there is little evidence to support this idea. The purists among the Fangwezi proposed to call the language "Kadziba" from the old word 'kadzi' (= work/labour) and 'bantu' (= people) to stress that the Fangwezi are hard working people but the name isn't popular. Nowadays most linguists agree that Fangwezi and Fanngwa are essentially the same language but that Fangwezi is like a rebelious twin has decided to differentiate itself as much as possible from the other twin.The similarities between Fangwezi and Fangwa are in part also due to the history of their peoples.

History of the Fangwezi
The Fangwa initially tried to forge an alliance with the Fangwezi by helping them expand to the North East (second map, the yellow area is the Fangwezi territories) but the Fangwezi wanted to expand to get access to the sea in the North-East in order not to be dependent of the Fangwa or Oseroa for fish since the Fangwezi Territories are landlocked. But when the Fangwa noticed the intentions of the Fangwezi the Fangwa stopped helping the Fangwezi and kept the Fangwezi Territories landlocked and encouraged the Fangwa in the South to interact with the Fangwezi in an effort to make the dialects near their common border more similar to eachother. This strategy succeeded in part making the Southern dialects of Fangwa more like Fangwezi but the Fangwezi reacted to this by standardizing their language and centralizing the education of language even more making the Fangwezi dialects less different to the standard Fangwezi language.

Numerals
The numbers in Fangwezi ressemble the numerals in Entesi a lot:

1) moje 2) bile 3) tsato 4) niye 5) tsano 6) tsandato 7) sombo 8) none 9) henda 10) gome

11) moje nqwa gome (lit : 1+10) etc. 20)  bile gome [lit: 2 times ten] 21) moje nqwa biligome etc

The upper tens are made by attatching the basic numeral to the word for ten so tsatogome = 30 (3 times 10) etc;

counting between the upper tens is done by consistently lower number first then put 'nqwa ' (=and) and the higher number, so 31 = moje nqwa tsatogome. 100 = zane, 1000 = nkotu, 1000.000 = foku

Personal Pronouns
The personal pronoun system is a little bit more complex than Fangwa but not much.

I = ndi, you (sg) = o, he/she (human) = a, we (incl) = to, we (excl) = ti, you (plur) = nqo, they (human) = ba

In addition to these pronouns Fangwezi also distinguished between the 3rd person animate (non-human) pronoun  i  and its  plural   bi  as well as the inanimate object prounoun  e  and its  plural form  be . The distinction is somewhat arbitrary: plants are considered animate while fruits and vegetables are inanimate, bodyparts are animate, eggs are inanimate, certain fluids are animate (water, milk, blood, rain, alcohol) while others are inanimate (fruit juices, sweat, urine)

Verbal system
Verbs like in all Bantu languages are a separate class in the noun class system; in Fangwezi they recieve the prefix ko so  ko bona = to see. Verbs are conjugated for 3 tenses:  ya  (present),  ri  (past),  la  (future tense) and 1 aspect:  ma  (perfect aspect from komada = to finish). All of these particles are inserted between the personal pronoun and the verb. E.g. ndi ya bona = I see; ndi ri bona = I saw; ndi la bona = I will see; ndi ma bona = I have seen

The noun class system
Fangwezi like all the other members of this constructed Bantu language family has a noun class system. The noun class system is very similar to the system of Fangwa but it doesn't have augmentatives nor diminutives.

The first and second class refer to humans but Fangwezi is very strict in the respect that all the nouns that refer to humans must start with these prefixes: it's either  mo  for the singular form or  ba  for the plural form. Some of the words in this class are:  mo rome (man) -  ba rome (men);  mo kazi (woman) -  ba kazi (women)

The third and fourth class refers to animals and insects (again singular and plural) and is marked by the prefixes  i  (singular) and  di  (plural), for example  i nza = dog -  di nza (dogs)

The fifth and sixth class refer to plants, fruits and vegetables, e.g.  mu ti (tree) -  me ti (trees),  mu  luwa = flower -  me luwa = flowers (this word has been incorporated in this class; in old texts the word luluwa has been found suggesting that is was part of the  lu  class, but this class no longer exists in Fangwezi so the transfer must be due to the semantic category of the word)

The seventh and eighth class refer to objects and tools, e.g. ketabo (book) - betabo (books)

The ninth class refers to certain fluids muozi (water), mazeba (rain), mvula (rain) this class has the prefix  ma,  this is the only irregular class that corresponds to the ma class in Fangwa but in Fangwezi the connection is less obvious. There are some speakers that try to regularize the words for 'water' and 'rain', these speakers say mamuozi (water) and mamvula (rain). This regularization started in the south of the Fangwezi territories but it looks like it's going to become the standard soon

The tenth class is the verb class, it encompasses all the verbs in Fangwezi: the prefix is  ko , e.g.  ko vokwa = to speak, to talk; ko ladya = to ask. In Fangwezi almost all the verbs end in the vowel - a, , even more than Fangwa that has some exceptions that are regular in Fangwezi, e.g. Fangwa: ukoladi = Fangwezi: kolady a = to ask

The eleventh class is the class of the abstract nouns, the prefix is  bo  for example:  bo zole = goodness from -zole = good (adjective)