الكاوندي

Kaonde (Kikaonde) is a Bantu language (Glottolog L41) spoken by approximately 400,000 people in North-Western Province of Zambia, with small populations across the DRC border in Katanga. Kaonde is one of Zambia's seven officially-recognized regional languages and is used in primary education and ZNBC broadcasting alongside Bemba, Nyanja, Tonga, Lozi, Lunda, and Luvale. Within the L40 Lunda-Kaonde subgroup, Kaonde shares many lexical items with sister languages Lunda (lun) and Luvale (lue), reflecting the Lunda-Luba mfecane migrations from the central Congolese savanna in the 18th century. Linguistically, Kaonde has typical Bantu features (16+ noun classes, complex verbal morphology with multiple tenses and aspect-mood markers, two-tone register system). Wright (1985) Kaonde-English Dictionary is the standard reference.