Manyika Language Alphabet

Manyika, ChiManyika to its speakers, is one of the main dialect groups of Shona, next to Zezuru, Karanga and Korekore. In Zimbabwe it has no spelling of its own: schools, newspapers and churches write it with the standard Shona orthography, so a Manyika text uses the same 24 letters as any Shona text, A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P R S T U V W Y Z. Q and x are not part of the standard Shona alphabet, c appears only in the pair ch, and l turns up mainly in borrowed words.

What makes Shona spelling look unusual is not special characters but letter pairs. Ch, sh and zh are the sounds of church, shoe and measure. Ny is the ny of canyon, ts and dz are single sounds, pf and bv are made with the lips and teeth together, and sv and zv are the famous whistled s and z of Shona, as in svika (arrive) and zvakanaka (good). An h after a letter changes it: plain b and d are implosive, said with the air drawn inward, while bh and dh are breathy, and v is a soft sound close to English w while vh is the hard English v.

The only character beyond plain A to Z is the apostrophe in n', the sound at the end of English sing, which Shona can put at the start of a word: n'ombe (cattle), n'anga (traditional healer), ngoma (drum). Writing it without the apostrophe changes the sound, so nombe is not the same word.

The old Shona letters ȿ ɀ ɓ ɗ ŋ

Before Shona had one spelling, the missions in each area printed hymn books, primers and scripture in their own spellings, and Manyika, around the missions of Manicaland, was one of them. In 1931 the linguist Clement Doke reported on unifying the Shona dialects, and the orthography that followed used special letters: ɓ and ɗ for the implosive b and d, ŋ for the ng of sing, and the s and z with a swash tail, ȿ and ɀ, for the whistled sounds.

These letters were hard to print and type, and in 1955 they were dropped in favour of plain letters and pairs: sv and zv for ȿ and ɀ, n' for ŋ, and plain b and d for the implosives, with bh and dh marking the breathy ones. Old books from that period still use them, and Unicode encodes ȿ (U+023F) and ɀ (U+0240) so that those Shona texts can be reproduced; the capitals Ȿ (U+2C7E) and Ɀ (U+2C7F) came later. Today they are useful for reproducing old Shona texts and may also appear in linguistic notation for Bantu fricatives.

How to type n' and the curly apostrophe ’

The plain apostrophe ' is on every keyboard, next to Enter on a US layout, and it is what most people type in n'ombe. Word processors and phones often turn it into the curly ’ automatically, which is also correct. To type ’ yourself, hold Alt and type 0146 on the Windows number pad, press Option+Shift+] on a Mac, or write ’ in HTML.

On an iPhone or Android phone, long-press the apostrophe key to choose between ' and ’. For the historical letters, copy them from this page, or in Microsoft Word type the code, such as 023F for ȿ or 0253 for ɓ, and press Alt+X. Watch the look-alike: ŋ is not the Greek letter η.

Where the Manyika language is spoken

Manyika is the language of Manicaland, the eastern province of Zimbabwe along the Mozambican border: the city of Mutare, Mutasa district, the Honde Valley and the Nyanga highlands. Unicode's CLDR estimates about 1.1 million speakers in Zimbabwe. The language also continues across the border into Mozambique's Manica Province, where the standardized spelling is Cimanyika and c represents a voiceless palatal stop.

Manyika is also the name of the people and of their historic kingdom, first ruled by the Chikanga dynasty before passing to the Mutasa dynasty. Speakers understand standard Shona easily and many also use English, one of Zimbabwe's 16 official languages. Its neighbours have their own collections: Shona for the standard language, Ndau to the south around Chipinge and in Mozambique, and the Zimbabwe and Mozambique collections for the flags and country emoji. In Zimbabwe prices are mostly written in US dollars with $, while Mozambique's metical (MZN) uses MTn in the Mozambican Portuguese locale.