Welcome to Martin Shumba's Shona language pages.
Our Shona Language Website Address has moved to a new domain:
http://www.mashumba.com
Please take a moment to add the new website to your bookmarks.
Thank you for your interest in our site.
Shona, or chiShona, is an African language spoken by nearly 80 percent of people
in Zimbabwe. There are clusters of Shona people or Shona speaking people in
Botswana and Mozambique, and in almost every country that shares borders with
Zimbabwe. Shona people had no input in drawing these borders.
There are many
regional Shona dialects. Shona language presented here has been limited to Shona
words and sample sentences commonly used in the four major Shona dialects;
Karanga, Zezuru, Manyika and Korekore. Minor Shona language dialects have, to a
large extent, been ignored. However, they are still part of the Shona language.
Korekore is one minor Shona dialect that I have elected to include because of
its richness in vocabulary. There are numerous words that, as far as I know, are
nonexistent in the major dialects, but are common words in Korekore.
Indoctrination by colonialists has led to the general mindset of the average
Zimbabwean that it is uncivilized to speak in these dialects. It is for this
reason that some Shona people are ashamed to speak in vernacular in
public.
Written Shona is constantly evolving. Unfortunately the language is
deteriorating because of the tendency to assimilate foreign languages. It is no
longer a pure language as spoken by my grandparents. The corruption of the
language is recent. This website is not a Shona tutorial, but a good reference
for Shona language as spoken in Zimbabwe. Website contains searchable
Shona-English and English-Shona dictionaries and includes general information
about the language. We are continually adding more words to the dictionaries.
Topics covered include, but are not limited to the following: