Shona

Sho·na

S5385950 (shō′nə)n. pl. Shona also Sho·nas 1. A member of a people of Zimbabwe and central Mozambique. The Shona include many subgroups, including the Karanga, Korekore, Manyika, Ndau, and Zezuru.2. The Bantu language of the Shona.

[Shona -shona as in Mashona, the Shona people, and Chishona, the Shona language.]

Shona

(ˈʃɒnə) npl -na or -nas1. (Peoples) a member of a Sotho people of S central Africa, living chiefly in Zimbabwe and Mozambique2. (Languages) the language of this people, belonging to the Bantu group of the Niger-Congo family

Sho•na

(ˈʃoʊ nə)

n., pl. -nas, (esp. collectively) -na. 1. a member of any of a group of African peoples living mainly in Zimbabwe and adjacent parts of Mozambique. 2. the Bantu languages of the Shona.

Thesaurus

Noun	1.	Shona - a member of a Bantu tribe living in present-day ZimbabweBantu - a member of any of a large number of linguistically related peoples of Central and South Africa
	2.	Shona - a Bantu language spoken in ZimbabweBantoid language, Bantu - a family of languages widely spoken in the southern half of the African continent
Adj.	1.	Shona - of or relating to or characteristic of the culture of the Shonas

Translations

Shona

a group of closely related languages, the most important of which are Karanga and Zezuru, of the south-central Bantu languages. According to a 1970 estimate, the Shona languages are spoken in Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) and Mozambique by 1.5 million people.

The Shona languages have five vowels. Consonants include a voiced bilabial implosive and a voiced dental implosive; nasalization, aspiration, and voicing of consonants occur at morpheme boundaries. Nouns are divided into 21 classes that form a system of concordances; in addition to augmentative, diminutive, and locative classes, the Shona languages have two special classes comprising proper names, kinship terms, and the names of totemic animals. The classes are marked by prepositive monosyllables. Verbs are conjugated by means of affixes. There are many ideo-phones. In the Shona languages, word order is fixed in the pattern subject-predicate-object. Attributes are postpositional; that is, they follow the modified word.

REFERENCES

Marconnès, F. A Grammar of Central Koranga. [Johannesburg, 1931.]
O’Neil, J. A. A Shona Grammar: Zezuru Dialect. London, 1935.
Shona: Basic Course. Washington, D.C., 1965.
Barnes, B. H. A Vocabulary of the Dialects of Mashonaland. London, 1932.

N. V. OKHOTTNA

Shona

Sho·na

Shona

Sho•na

Shona

Shona

REFERENCES

Shona

Words related to Shona

noun a member of a Bantu tribe living in present-day Zimbabwe

Related Words

noun a Bantu language spoken in Zimbabwe

Related Words