Learn Kuanyama Through Topics You Actually Care About

LingoBear creates short Kuanyama passages on topics you choose. Tap any word for an instant English translation and build your vocabulary as you read. Bantu language of northern Namibia and southern Angola, one of the two standardised forms of Oshiwambo, Latin script, ~1.5M Oshiwambo speakers in total.

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Every word in your Kuanyama reading passage is clickable. Get English translations and grammar help — useful for parsing the Oshiwambo noun-class agreement system.

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Type any topic and LingoBear generates a fresh Kuanyama reading passage — useful when published materials are concentrated in northern Namibia.

What is Kuanyama and where is it spoken?

Kuanyama (Oshikwanyama) is a Bantu language and one of the two standardised written forms of Oshiwambo, the language cluster of the Ovambo people, spoken across northern Namibia and southern Angola. The other standard is Oshindonga. Oshiwambo as a whole has around 1.5 million speakers and is the most widely spoken first language in Namibia.

What grammar features does Kuanyama have?

Kuanyama uses Bantu noun classes (about 14 active classes) that drive agreement throughout the clause, SVO word order, and verbal extensions for applicative (-el-), causative (-ith-) and reciprocal (-an-) meanings. Tone is contrastive but light. Like other Oshiwambo varieties it has been written in the Latin alphabet since Finnish missionaries produced the first dictionary in the 1880s.