TheFwe language, also known as Chifwe, is aBantu language spoken by theFwe people (Mafwe orBafwe) inNamibia andZambia. It is closely related to theSubia language,Chisubia, and is one of several Bantu languages that featureclick consonants.

Silozi is used as the formal language in official, educational, and media contexts.^[3][4]

Fwe is part of the Bantu language family, a sub-branch of the Niger-Congo family. Maho (2009) classifies it as K.402, sharing the K.40 category withIkuhane andTotela.^[5] Bohoe (2009) classifies it as BantuBotatwe, along withToka,Leya,Ila,Tonga,Sala,Lenje,Lundwe, andSoli.^[6][7]

Main phonological differences between Zambian and Namibian Fwe, as noted by both the speakers and seen in the data:^[8]

Morphological differences between Zambian and Namibian Fwe:

Fwe syllables consist, at most, of a consonant, aglide, and a vowel.

Consonant inventory of Fwe^[9]

		Bilabial	Dental/ Labiodental	Alveolar	Postalveolar/ Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Click	plain		ᵏǀᶢǀ
	prenasalized		ⁿ̥ǀⁿǀ
Nasal		m		n	ɲ	ŋ
Stop	voiceless	p		t		k
	voiced	b		d		ɡ
	prenasalized	ᵐpᵐb		ⁿtⁿd		ᵑkᵑɡ
Fricative	voiceless		f	s	ʃ		h
	voiced	β	v	z	ʒ
	prenasalized		ᶬfᶬv	ⁿsⁿz	ᶮʃ
Affricate	voiceless				tʃ
	voiced				dʒ
	prenasalized				ᶮtʃᶮdʒ
Tap				ɾ
Glide					j	w

• The plosives/pbdg/ are considered peripheral phonemes, as they are relatively infrequent in the lexicon. They are not reflexes of *p, *b, *d and *g as reconstructed forProto-Bantu, but mainly appear in loanwords.^[10]
• Though there are numerous cases where /h/ contrasts with zero, i.e. where /h/ can-not be omitted, [h] is also often used as anepenthetic consonant, in which case it freely commutes with [w], [j] and zero. Phonemic/h/, on the other hand, cannot commute with a glide nor can it be dropped.^[11]

Fwe has five contrastive vowel phonemes:/iuɛɔa/. Vowels contrast in length, as seen in the minimal pairs below:^[12]

The placement and proximity of vowels in Fwe influences tonal processes. Vowels placed at the beginning of a word are known as augments (glossed asAUG) and final vowels are those placed at the end of a word (glossed asFV). Tone is also affected by whether a vowel is lengthened or deleted, as well as how sounds and words are positioned together within and across morphemic boundaries.

Fwe is a tonal language, as are most languages within theBantu family. Pitch differences on the vowel contribute to differing meanings. This contrastive tonal system is demonstrated by the existence ofminimal pairs:

Fwe has two underlyingtones, high and low. At the surface level, these tones may be articulated as high, low, falling, or downstepped high tone.^[13] Specific tone usage in Fwe, namely the underlying high tone, is subject to several processes which affect its placement relative to other tones within morphemes or phrases. These tonal processes determine whether high or low tones are used in succession.^[14]

Tones in Fwe occur on themora of words. Vowel combinations consist of either one (for short vowels) or two morae (for long or lengthened vowels).^[15] Tonal processes will be affected by the overall vowel environment as well as morae.

There is grammatical necessity to correct tonal placement. Tones will impact many elements of Fwe language, includingtense-aspect-mood marking, which utilizes high floating or "melodic tone." Placing high tones on augments, as well as on specific areas of inflected verb stems, will impart TAM information.^[16] Additionally, subject markers prefixed to verbs in main clauses will have a low tone, while subject markers prefixed to verbs for relative clauses will have a high tone. These subject markers are otherwise identical in their syntactic, vowel and consonant makeup.^[17]

There are 19 noun classes, numbered one to eighteen, including class 1a. These are marked as prefixes on the noun. Adjectives take on the augment and prefix when in agreement with a noun. A table of noun classes is given by Gunnink (2018):^[18]

There are four distance distinctions, or series, within demonstratives. Possessives can be expressed as suffixes on the noun they modify. Tense, aspect, negation, modality, subject, object, locatives, and spatial deixis can all be marked on the verb. Subject marking on the verb is obligatory. The general verb structure is pre-initial - subject - post-initial - object - root - derivational suffixes - pre-final - final vowel - clitic.

Fwe follows an SVO, or Subject Verb Object order. Constituents can be moved to the front of a clause to be marked for topic, or to the end to be marked for definiteness. An example of the word order can be found below:^[19]

Fwe Causative constructions are constructed through inderect causation semantically and use a complex predicate strategy. There is overt coding on the verb with a dedicated causative affix being added to indicate causality. For an intransitive verb, adding the causitive affix will make the word transitive, as shown with the verb "to burn" below:[20]

Fwe's unmarked or "canonical" word order for a main clause isSVO (see above). Parts of the clause can be shifted to the left- or rightmost boundaries of a sentence (left- or right dislocation in Fwe markingtopic ordefiniteness, respectively).^[21] Tonal processes in these cases move accordingly: underlying high tones become falling tones, while final high tones move to the penultimate mora.^[22] Left-dislocated elements are typically adjuncts denotinglocative or object information, setting up the topic for following clauses.

Right-dislocated elements can involve subjects (typically human) or objects, and are rendered definite by their position. While both dislocation types reference the main clause verb, right-dislocated elements are not as topicalized as left-dislocated elements.

Details of time and progression, as well as those for participants and surrounding referents, can be modified or introduced into a narrative following the main clause.Subordinate clauses, also known as dependent clauses, attach to and relate information about or lead from a main clause and its elements, usually by means of aconjunctive construction.

Fwe utilizes a remote past perfective tense form (RPP). This form "marks remoteness"; namely, the point of time in which the clause is framed to have occurred long before it is uttered.^[23] This construction applies a prefix (na-/ni-) to the subject marker at the beginning of a clause, as well as a past-tense prefix (a-) to the word after the initial. The final vowel (-a), considered the "default" in Fwe, completes the boundary for an RPP construction.^[24] RPP constructions for subordinate clauses can vary between Namibian and Zambian versions of Fwe (the latter variation commonly beingne- instead ofna-.^[25]

RPP constructions can also be used in subordinate clauses with the subjunctive to show an event to occur far into the future; for contrasting points in time; and for other perfective uses, where the clause is taken as a temporally indivisible unit.[26] Although near future verb constructions exist in Fwe, they cannot be negated, as semantically negation conflicts with verbal focus combined with remote prefixes.^[27] As a result, subordinate clauses demonstrating near future or negation use present tense or perfective subjunctive forms:

For points in time that are nearer to utterance time, but otherwise not specified, the RPP construction is applied,minus thena-/ni-/ne- prefix. This construction implies that can be as much as 50 years prior, to as recently as the day before, the clause is spoken. However, with verbs denoting experience, the near past perfective is used:[28]

Fwe uses a comitative prefix in order to denote same subject coordination clauses with a deranking strategy on the posterior clause. This means that the comitative prefix "nV-" can be used to create complex clauses. V in "nV" refers to any given vowel, as the comitative prefix vowel is dependent on the following vowel of the word in which it is linking to.^[29] Deranking the posterior clause in Fwe causes the posterior sentence to lose conjugation of the verb, leaving the clause in the infinitive as shown below.

For a different subject coordination clause, the clauses are juxtaposed together using a zero coordination strategy, and both clauses are treated as balanced. A balanced coordination means that both clauses are grammatically equal.

• Subia languages
• Languages of Namibia
• Click languages

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• Short description is different from Wikidata
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• Language articles without reference field
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