Talk:Shona language

message: "Shona speakers comprise more than 80% of Zimbabwe's population and number about 6,225,000."
The population of Zimbabwe is listed as 13.3 million.  6.23 million is slightly less than 50%.  Someone needs to update these figures! 05:08, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Population Figures 

message: I pulled out the following paragraphs. They seem to be verbatim copied from here, constituting a possible copyright violation.
:The archaeological ruins known as "Great Zimbabwe" have been radiocarbon dated to approximately 600 A.D. It is believed that the ancestors of modern day Shona built Great Zimbabwe and hundreds of other stone walled sites in Zimbabwe. It was not until the late 19th century that the peoples speaking several mutually intelligible languages were united under the Shona name. 
:There are five main language clusters: Korekore, Zezuru, Manyika, Ndau, and Karanga. The last of these groups was largely absorbed by the Ndebele when they moved into western Zimbabwe in the 1830s; some of their descendants are identified today as Kalanga. 
I've also added a small bibliography. Let's rewrite this!  — mark ✎ 00:28, 12 Feb 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Possible copyvio 

message: Shona is widely spoken, but I've checked some sources such as the CIA Factbook and it states that English is the only official language. Should that be changed? --Bash 00:04, 28 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Official Language? 

message: How many sounds has the Shona language? --84.61.24.175 09:01, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Number of sounds 

message: It is mentioned in the "Pronounciation" section that the question "Unoenda Kupi?" translates to "Where are you going". In actual fact the correct translation is "Where do you go". "Where are you going?" would be "Urikuenda Kupi?". By the way i am a native Shona speaker.Macnos (talk) 23:42, 11 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Incorrect Translation 

message: Shona is not my 1st Language but one of the languages i can speak. I read the whole thing but i think it should be noted that the Shona language writing is based on the English alphabet and the main difference is that it misses the Letter L and even in the pronunciation of any word(to the best of my knowledge)  —Preceding unsigned comment added by LarryTheGreat (talk • contribs) 16:35, 14 July 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Based on The English alphabet 

message: If you are a native speaker of Shona then you can help translate this template into your own language:
 Edit
--Amazonien (talk) 02:47, 20 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Shona language template

message: I have no idea of the veracity of the above text (except the bit about Mzilikazi coming via Mozambique, which is obviously wrong), but am posting it here in case it proves useful. The remaining text is here Babakathy (talk) 09:48, 26 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Transferred from [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Great_Zimbabwe_National_Monument&oldid=264654379 Great Zimbabwe National Monument], where it did not belong 

message: Chirikure Chirikure is a notable Shona poet, and there is a page with poetry of his, in Shona and translation, at
www.lyrikline.org/index.php?id=60&L=1&author=cc00&cHash=efa2be756d
(the site is globally blacklisted, but I've requested whitelisting this one link at current discussion, permanent link to current revision, and I expect that the request will be successful. In the absence of better examples of Shona, I think this may be appropriate as an external link here, and, after whitelisting, would intend to add it. It's been added to the parallel article on de.wikipedia (by me, but with notice; lyrikline.org is totally whitelisted on de.wikipedia). Comments? --Abd (talk) 14:04, 19 February 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Whitelisting of the English language interface to Lyrikline.org having been successful, and there having been no objection here, I am adding the link as reasonable. --Abd (talk) 16:18, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Possible external link for this article. 

message: IP 196.2.77.213 said in this edit that There is no such thing as Toko dialect, if you are referring to the dialect spoken in Mutoko. It is called Buja/Budya which is correctly designated below as a subdialect of Korekore.
I have no information on this myself, but it is better to have the discussion here rather than as an edit. Babakathy (talk) 09:36, 31 December 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Toko dialect 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just added archive links to  on Shona language. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add  after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add  to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/20110629163343/http://linguistics.berkeley.edu/phonlab/annual_report/documents/2006/whistleISSP.pdf to http://linguistics.berkeley.edu/phonlab/annual_report/documents/2006/whistleISSP.pdf
When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true to let others know.
Cheers. —cyberbot IITalk to my owner:Online 10:42, 18 October 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified 

message: The cited sources don't state the exact dialect that it's describing either, but we can infer that it is most likely Zezuru or standard Shona. That said, the "Alphabet" section seems mostly correctly with what I found in my undergraduate language documentation course, but I would strongly dispute the IPA values for several of the multigraphs in the Orthography section since some of them have allophonic variation and can even vary depending on the Shona dialect in question. For example, the language informant that I worked with said that <dy> was pronounced in the Karanga dialect as either [d͡ʒ] or [ɮ] (depending on the phonological environment), but was roughly pronounced as /ʒ̤ig̤/ in the Zezuru dialect. We should also recognize that <mh> is missing from the alphabet section, which is inconsistent because there is a bilabial breathy nasal shown in the IPA consonants table. Voluntari Tau (talk) 05:54, 21 December 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Source for Shona Orthography / Alphabet 

message: The article currently says “Mupanda 20 was omitted because it is considered vulgar” - is this “omitted from this article” or “dropped from the language”? If it’s the former, I would assume based on Wikipedia’s policy on offensive material it should be included in the list regardless of its vulgarity, and if it’s the latter it should be more clearly stated. Google suggests the class prefix is svi- and it’s vulgar due to its association with the word “svira” meaning “to copulate”. Caywinter (talk) 18:31, 27 January 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Mupanda 20 missing due to “vulgarity” 

message: How are you 105.8.0.224 (talk) 14:34, 7 February 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Shona 

message: This paragraph is unsubstantiated. I'm no expert but this (from the bottom of the Varieties section) seems to be fanciful, especially the part I highlight:
 Wayne (talk) 10:37, 28 November 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Base bantu language 

message: It appears that the IPA given for the whistled consonants/clusters should be using s͎ from extIPA; the present IPA given in the article for these has no indication of their whistled nature and is saying to pronounce them without the whistling.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  12:47, 19 May 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Whistled IPA