Oshindonga (Ndonga) Alphabet

Oshindonga is one of the two written standards of Oshiwambo, the language of the Aawambo of northern Namibia; the other is Oshikwanyama (Kwanyama). Both are written in the Latin alphabet without any diacritics. The symbol grid above gives these native Oshindonga letters in capital and small form: a b d e f g h i j k l m n o p s t u v w y. Oshindonga also uses z in native words. The letters c, q, r and x are left out because they are not part of the native spelling; they appear in foreign names and in borrowed words kept in their original form.

Ndonga is a tonal Bantu language, but the everyday spelling does not mark tone, so a Bible, schoolbook or newspaper in Oshindonga has no é, è or tilde anywhere. Unicode's CLDR, the data that teaches phones and computers each language, lists Ndonga under its two-letter code ng but has no alphabet entry for it yet, so the grid here follows the standard school spelling.

Double vowels, dh and th: how Oshindonga words are spelled

Oshindonga writes a long vowel by doubling it: aantu (people), Aawambo (the Ovambo people), Ombiimbeli (the Bible) and the mission town of Oniipa. Finnish spells long vowels the same way, and Finnish missionaries were the first to put Ndonga in writing; the convention matters, because a single and a double vowel can make different words.

Two sounds that set Ndonga apart from Kwanyama are written with a following h. Dh is the voiced sound of English this, as in edhina (name) and the old kingdom of Uukwaluudhi; th is the sound of English thin, as in the town of Omuthiya. Sh is the sh of shoe (Oshindonga, Oshakati), ng sounds as in finger (Ondonga, Kalunga), and ndj, an n before a j-like sound, starts ondjila (road) and the second word of Ombiimbeli Ondjapuki, the Holy Bible. None of these needs a special character, so they have no cells of their own in the grid.

Nouns begin with a class prefix, usually with an initial vowel, which is why so many words start with o-, e- or a-. The language is Oshindonga (oshi- marks languages), one person is an omuntu and people are aantu. Where Kwanyama writes the plural prefix ova-, Ndonga writes aa-: Kwanyama Ovawambo, ovanhu against Ndonga Aawambo, aantu, the quickest way to tell the two apart on the page.

How to type Oshindonga on a keyboard or phone

Every Oshindonga letter is on a standard English keyboard, so nothing needs installing: an English (Namibia), English (US) or Afrikaans layout types the whole language, and so does any phone keyboard. Autocorrect can be a problem on phones, because it may try to turn Ndonga words into English ones or to undo doubled vowels; add the words you use often to the keyboard's personal dictionary, or switch autocorrect off while you write.

For curly quotation marks on Windows, hold Alt and type 0147 for “, 0148 for ”, 0145 for ‘ and 0146 for ’ on the number pad; on a Mac, Option+[ gives “, Option+Shift+[ gives ”, Option+] gives ‘ and Option+Shift+] gives ’. Phones curl straight quotes by themselves. Prices are written in Namibian dollars with the ordinary dollar sign, N$, for example N$50.

Where the Ndonga language is spoken

Ndonga is the language of Ondonga, the old Ovambo kingdom in north-central Namibia, today mainly the Oshikoto and Oshana regions around Ondangwa, Oniipa, Olukonda, Onayena and Omuthiya, and it is heard across the country wherever northerners have moved, Windhoek included. Unicode's CLDR estimates roughly 590,000 speakers in Namibia. Oshindonga is also the written language used by speakers of neighbouring Oshiwambo varieties without a school standard of their own, such as Kwambi and Ngandjera, and it is taught and examined as a school subject in Namibia.

Written Ndonga grew out of the Finnish Lutheran mission that reached Ondonga in 1870. The missionary Martti Rautanen, called Nakambale by the Aawambo, spent decades at Olukonda translating the Bible and hymns into Oshindonga, and his former mission house there is now the Nakambale Museum; the church remains part of the site. The Lutheran church remains central to Ndonga life, which is why the Oshindonga Bible is a central text of the language. Kwanyama, Ndonga's closest relative, has its own collection; Herero, Nama, Afrikaans and English are its neighbours in Namibia, and the Namibia collection holds the flag 🇳🇦 and the country's emoji.