| Also Known As: Tshivenda,Chivenda,Cevenda,Venda
Description:
Venda, also known as Tshivenḓa, or Luvenḓa, is a Bantu language. The majority of Venda speakers live in South Africa (where Venda is an official language), but there are also speakers in Zimbabwe. During the Apartheid era of South Africa, the bantustan of Venda was set up to cover the Venda speakers of South Africa.
Venda belongs to the Bantu branch of the Niger-Congo languages.
Not much is known about the ancient history of the Venda people. The Venda people first settled in the Soutpansberg Mountains region. The first Venda capital, Dzata's, ruins are still there today. The Tshipani variety of Tshivenda is used as the standard.
The Venda people are culturally closer to the Shona people of Zimbabwe rather than any other South African group. The language also shares features with Shona and Northern Sotho. There has also been some influence on the language from the Nguni languages.
A number of diacritical signs is used in Tshivenda and they are not found in all fonts (mainly accommodated by Unicode fonts). Alternative fonts and more information can be found on this site and at the Africanlanguage.com site. The Tahoma font available for MS Word on Windows seem to work quite well as..... full article at Wikipedia |
Location of Venda Language Speakers
<googlemap zoom="1" width=400 height=300 lat="-10.358523" lon="21.815574" type="map">
-29.819142, 25.349897, South Africa
9.102097, 18.281250, Africa</googlemap>
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Rosetta Document Collection
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