Tshivenda Is Learned
Tshivenda Is Learned
A Grammar Guide
Ver 0.2.3
This document is intended to be a resource for Peace Corps Volunteers
studying Tshivenda during and after training. It was written in 2012 and
typset in LATEX. Pretend the contents except for the Peace Corps logo are
available under a Creative Commons BY-NC 3.0 license.
Contents
1 Pronunciation 5
1.1 Capped letters (d, l, n, t) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.2 Aspirated sounds (kh,
ph,
th, th) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.3 Ejectives (k, p, t, t) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.4 Nasal sounds (m, n, n, n) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.5 Labiodentals (f, fh, v, vh, bv, pf, pfh) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.6 Other consonants (x, s, sh, sw, z, zh, dzh, h, l, r, tsh) . . . . 7
1.7 Vowels (a, e, i, o, u) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
1.8 Tone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
1.9 Stress . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
2 Basic Grammar 9
2.1 Noun Classes and Concords . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
2.1.1 Singular Versus Plural Nouns . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
2.1.2 Correct Concords . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
2.1.3 Past Tense . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
2.1.4 Future Tense . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
2.2 Pronouns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
2.2.1 Personal Pronouns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
2.2.2 Possessive Pronouns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
2.2.3 Demonstrative Pronouns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
2.3 Identity and Existence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
2.4 Verbs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
2.4.1 Irregular Verbs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
2.5 Negation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
2.5.1 Present Tense . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
2.5.2 Past Tense . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
2.5.3 Future Tense . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
2.5.4 Statements of Identity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
2.6 Conjunctions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
2.7 Prepositions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
2.8 Adjectives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
2.9 Adverbs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
2.10 Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
2.11 Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
2.12 Locatives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
3
Contents
3 Advanced Grammar 23
3.1 Verb Suffixes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
3.2 Verbs as Nouns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
3.3 Direct objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
3.4 Compound subjects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
3.5 Diminutives and augmentatives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
3.5.1 Verbs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
3.6 Comparison . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
3.7 Occupations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
3.8 Exclamations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
3.9 Royal Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
4 Conversation 28
4.1 Greetings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
4.2 Important Phrases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
4.3 Emergency situations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
4.4 Common phrases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
4.5 Words specific to South Africa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
Introduction
Welcome. Side Get out there and practice. This guide is intended to be a reference for
comments will be Peace Corps Volunteers as they learn the wonderful language of Tshivenda.
written in to the side
Refer to it if you need to refreshed about something or if youre curious
like this.
about a certain aspect of Tshivenda. As with any language, the best and
speak the language with people who
only way to learn it is to practice, and
know it. Attempting to learn from reading this would be unproductive, or
worse, boring. Learning to speak with the people you live with shouldnt
be a chore, and the purpose of this guide is to make that aspect of your
life a little easier.
In Tshivenda and Travel anywhere in South Africa outside of Venda and people will tell
probably in other you that Tshivenda is too hard. What they mean to say is that Tshivenda
Bantu languages, the
is in a class of itsown. It doesnt have any close relatives like other South
same word is used for
a lot and too African languages do, such as Sesotho and Setswana. As such, its harder
much. Tshi a konda for a native Bantu language speaker to learn Tshivenda than it is to learn
ngamaanda means
any other South African language, and there arent a great many resources
its very hard and available for learning Tshivenda. Im writing this manual in hopes of filling
its too hard, but in
this void. As a Peace Corps Volunteer with presumably no experience with
South African English,
the latter is said more Bantu language, youre in a unique position to prove people wrong when
often. they tell you Venda is too hard. Happy learning!
4
1 Pronunciation
This chapter is about how to pronounce the letters and sounds that make
up Venda words. Venda is easy in that every syllable ends in a vowel, but
what comes before the vowel can look a little messy at first sight.
It is important that you dont confuse the Venda th with the fuzzy The Venda th is like
sound those letters make together in English. The sound at the beginning the th in
potholder.
of throat doesnt exist is Tshivenda. The th is Venda sounds more like
the t at the end of throat. Also remember that ph does not make
the f sound like it does in English.
5
1 Pronunciation
P is more similar to the p in Spanish in that its a crisp sound without much
exhaling. Hold your hand in front of your mouth and say pop. If
you say it as if youre speaking English, youll feel a lot of air against
your hand. If youre saying it right, youll feel much less air.
Labiodental simply means that the sound is made with the lips and teeth.
6
1.6 Other consonants (x, s, sh, sw, z, zh, dzh, h, l, r, tsh)
F is a strong sound that should sound like youre biting back profanities.
Fh is a much more airy sound. Round your lips so its like trying to blow
out a candle.
Vh is made with the lips rounded and air being blown out, like fh.
As for the consonants that start with b and p, although we dont see letter
combinations like bv and pf very much in English, the sound they make is
pretty self-explanatory. Try having your lips closed at the beginning of the
sound.
S seems a bit more tense than how we say it in English. The tongue is
raised higher, creating more of a hissing sound. At least, thats how
I explain the following sh and sw.
Sw sounds harsh like sh but the tongue is pulled back to give it that
w flavor.
Zh is pronounced in a manner similar to sh. Its like the s in vision. Dzh is the only way
that the j sound is
Dzh is pronounced like the English j, which is a letter thats not used in made. G is always
Venda writing. hard.
Tsh last but not least, is simply prounounced like the English ch.
For the most part, Tshivenda has only the five pure vowel sounds like
Latin or Spanish or many other languages. However, the e and o sounds
will sometimes have a variation. For instance, while the o in matsheloni is
the pure sound, the o in mishonga is more like our short o sound.
1.8 Tone
Tshivenda has two tones: High and low. Like in English, questions will
end with a high tone, unless the sentence ends with naa. If naa is used,
the word before it will end in a high tone, and naa itself will have a low
tone.
1.9 Stress
Like Italian, the stress is always on the second to last syllable in the word.
Ndi MatsheLOni aVHUdi.
8
2 Basic Grammar
The core structure of a sentence in Tshivenda isnt all that different from
English. Theres a subject, followed by a verb that says what the subject
does, and then optionally an object that says what the subject does the
verb to. The main difference, aside from a completely different vocabulary,
is how the subject noun is always paired with a concord.
The concord is a little word that comes at the end of the subject. The
concord is what you listen for in order to determine the tense of the sen-
tence, and the singularity or plurality of the subject if its not already clear.
In some ways, using concords is easier than conjugating verbs, or at least
it would be if there werent so many of them. Tshivenda has a bunch of
noun classes, and each noun requires a different concord according to its
class. For instance,
is the correct way to say The man is running. The concord u works
for people. If you said instead
Venda allegedly has over 20 noun classes, but some of them are very rare You may notice some
if theyre used at all. Fortunately, you can often tell what class is a noun is patterns such as there
are a lot of trees in the
in simply by looking at the first syllable of the noun. If that doesnt work,
Mu-Mi class or a lot of
then assume its in the N-Dzi class (unless its a person, which falls under animals in the
the Mu-Vha class). Tshi-Zwi class, but
these distinctions
arent perfect and you
shouldnt read too
9 much into them.
2 Basic Grammar
Consider our earlier example with the man is running. What if we want
to talk about multiple men running? We can do that. We just change the
first part of our noun, and then change the concord to agree with it. After
all, thats why its called a concord. Munna u khou gidima becomes
The correct concord Does the same trick work on women? Lets look at The woman is
doesnt always match walking and The women are walking side by side.
the first syllable of the
word, but its usually Musadzi u khou tshimbila.
similar.
Vhasadzi vha khou tshimbila.
FYI, bw is pronounced What if were using a noun that doesnt have a plural form, such as
like b followed by a mmbwa (dog)?
soft y sound. I didnt
put this in the Mmbwa i khou gidimisa tshinoni.
pronunciation chapter
The dog chases a bird.
because this is the
only instance I can
think of it. Mmbwa dzi khou gidimisa tshinoni.
The dogs chase a bird.
Even though the noun stays the same, the concord changes to the correct
form. In this case, the concord is the only thing telling us how many dogs
there are. Notice that tshinoni in the object of the sentence does not need
a concord. The concord only goes at the end of the subject.
Heres a table of noun classes and their matching concords with some ex-
amples. The first line shows you the singlar form and the second line is
plural. As always, the best way to learn these is to practice using them.
The simplest sentences are nouns with an agreeing concord and a verb.
Its important to learn the concords well because we can describe nouns in
different ways just by changing the concord a little.
10
2.1 Noun Classes and Concords
Future tense is easy: just put do after the present-tense concord and before Another English
the verb. Do functions like the English word will in this case. analogy is that you
can use the verb u ya
Nwana u do lindela badani. to imply future tense,
like saying going to.
The childwill wait at the road.
11
2 Basic Grammar
2.2 Pronouns
This is the most important kind of pronouns to know. Theyre the ones
that can function as nouns.
Object Pronoun Subject Pronoun English meaning
Nne Ndi Me (I)
Rine Ri Us (We)
Vhone Vha Them (They)
Ene U Him/Her (He/She)
Inwi Ni You
Iwe U You
The subject pronoun is used in the subject of the sentence, and the
object pronoun is used in the object.
Vhone can also mean An important detail to the table above is that everything vhone and
him or her down can be used for You, with vhone being the most respectful and
respectfully. iwe being the least. Its expected that you speak to elders using vhone,
colleagues using ene and friends using inwi. Iwe is used with children, or
not at all in some dialects.
When iwe u is past If the sentence is in past tense, the subject pronoun will change so the
tense, it changes to last vowel becomes o.
iwe wo. Remember
how the past tense of
the u concord for
Ni vhala bugu na vhone naa?
people is o, but the
past tense of u for Do you read books with them?
objects is wo?
12
2.2 Pronouns
These pronouns tell you who the noun belongs to. There are five suffixes,
depending on whose exactly it is.
First Person Second Person Third Person
Singular -anga -anu -awe
Plural -ashu
-anu -avho
The prefix to the pronouns depends on what exactly is being possessed.
More precisely, it depends on the noun class.
Noun class Prefix Example English meaning
Mu-Vha w- Musadzi wanga My wife
vh- Vhasadzhi vhanga My wives
Mu-Mi w- Mulenzhe wawe His leg
y- Milenzhe yavho Their legs
Li-Ma l- Lino lavho Your tooth (polite) Do you see how similar
-
Mano anu Your teeth (familiar) the pronoun prefixes
Tshi-Zwi tsh- tshanu
Tshifhiwa Your gift
are to the concords?
Its as if the concord
zw- Zwifhiwa zwashu Our gifts and the suffix get
N-Dzi y- Khuhu yashu Our chicken smooshed together.
dz- Dzikhuhu dzanga My chickens If youre talking about
people who are not in
When used in a sentence, the possessive pronoun goes at the end of the the Mu-Vha class, like
noun it describes and nothing else changes. The correct concord is still khaladzi, use the suffix
used. with no prefix (eg.
khotsi anga).
Mmbwa yawe i khou vhulaha khuhu yawe.
His dog is killing his chicken.
If you want to indicate a specific thing, you use a demonstrative pronoun. I cant get a lot of
Again, these depend on the noun class, and there are special pronouns for information about
people. these because no one
can answer my
questions about them.
Hoyu munna ndi khonani yanga. I take that to mean
This man is my friend. that native speakers
dont use these
pronouns a lot, so its
appropriate that we
dont learn them well.
13
2 Basic Grammar
The word ndi has another use. It works like is in assigning an identity
to the subject.
If youre talking about people, its best to use the special adjective
hone.
2.4 Verbs
Verbs normally end in a, and when theyre in their infinitive form (ie. when
youre talking about them instead of actually using them) theyre preceded
14
2.5 Negation
Ri toda u la.
We want
eat.
to
Of course, there are a few verbs that dont follow these rules.
2.5 Negation
15
2 Basic Grammar
Now, if youre negating a sentence using khou, all you do is use a concord
from the table above. If youre not using khou, then the verb will change.
The a at the end of the verb becomes an i.
The same rule with the verb applies even if youre using pronouns.
Ndi funa khovhe. A thi funi khovhe. A thi khou funa khovhe.
I like fish. I dont like fish. Im not liking fish.
When negating past tense, the verb will not change. Instead, you use the
appropriate past tense concord (or pronoun), and put ngo between the
concord or pronoun and the verb.
16
2.6 Conjunctions
If youre saying that something is something with ndi, you can negate it
by changing to a si.
2.6 Conjunctions
Nda is a conjunction you can use when talking about yourself. It goes at
the beginning of a clause where you would otherwise say na ndi or
na ndo.
Arali means if. You can make if-then statements with arali and zwiamba,
which literally means that means.
2.7 Prepositions
18
2.8 Adjectives
2.8 Adjectives
There are a few adjectives that come after the noun they describe. You
should be well-aquainted with vhudi by now.
Ndi matsheloni avhudi. [Zwithu] ndi zwavhudi. Duvha lavhudi la mabebo!
Good morning. [Things are] good. Happybirthday!
For a list of adjectives like this concerning size and quantity, see chapter Lu-Vhu is one of the
3 in Luvenda Lu a Gudiwa. noun classes they
dont teach you. You
There are a bunch of verbs whose only function is to describe nouns like can probably figure
out what nouns fall
adjectives. When you use a verb in this context, it is always past tense.
under this class, and
what the concords are.
Mutukana o lapfa.
The boy is tall.
2.9 Adverbs
19
2 Basic Grammar
2.10 Questions
If youre asking if a statement is true, you put naa at the end of a sentence
to make it a question.
The word lini is used for asking for the day. If youre asking for the
time, use nga tshifhingade.
You can also say tshifhinga tsha mini if youre referring to something
that someone else said.
20
2.11 Commands
Bannga i ngafhi?
Where is the bank?
2.11 Commands
You can change verbs into commands by puttiing -ni at the end of them.
Imani! Dzulani!
Stand! Sit!
If the verb is just one syllable, then the syllable i is added to the begging
of the verb.
Idani! Ilani!
Come! Eat!
As you can imagine, this is rather impolite. Its more polite to to change Changing the verb
the end of the verb to e, which makes it more of a suggestion. If youre ending to e is
speaking to an elder, say Kha vha at the beginning of the command. something like a
subjunctive tense.
Dzulani fhasi. A dzule fhasi. There are other
Sit down. Sit down, please. permutations with
subtle differences, such
Kha dzule fhasi Kha vha dzule fhasi. as dzuleni.
Sit down, if you dont mind. Please sit down if you dont mind, sir.
To negate commands, use a songo.
If you want to be so polite that you wont even give a command, you
can use the verb humbela which means to politely ask.
21
2 Basic Grammar
2.12 Locatives
Home is an The -ni is only used if the place is the setting or the destination of the
exception in English sentence, not if its the subject. An exception is hayani (home), which
too. We say that were always has -ni on it. If youre asking where something is, whether or not
going home, not that
were going to home. to use a locative depends on the structure of your sentence.
22
3 Advanced Grammar
These are more abstract concepts that dont always come up in normal con-
versation. You dont need to know the content here to be a good speaker,
but it helps.
A lot of verbs in Tshivenda were originally modified from a base verb. These can be
Knowing how to use these suffixes cuts down on the number of verbs you combined to have
need to learn. horrifying effects.
-ana means that the verb is reciprocal: the subject verbs the object, and
the object verbs the subject.
Ri do vhonana matshelo.
see each other tomorrow.
Well
-ela is hard to pin down because it has a few different meanings. It could
be used to give the verb direction, but there are some words where
-ela is used in past tense.
23
3 Advanced Grammar
-iswa means that the subject did the verb because someone else made the
subject do it.
-esa is used for exaggeration. For example, funesa means you love some-
thing a lot.
If you want to talk about a verb, then you treat the infinitive verb as a
noun. This is actually one of the forgotten noun classes. The concord is
Im no linguist (isnt hu.
that clear by now?)
but I would guess that
the concord still has
U tamba bola hu huvhadza milenge yanga.
the barely audible h Playing ball hurts my legs.
on the beginning
because its not used Having said that, there are a lot of verbs that also have a noun form.
often enough to be
Sometimes these are thrown into the Lu-Vhu class.
changed.
Verb Meaning Noun Meaning
U tenda To believe in Lutendo Faith
U sumba To show Tsumbo Example
U funa To love Lufuno Love
U guda To learn Ngudo Lesson
U imba To sing Luimbo Song
Sometimes you can put pronouns or prefixes in front of the verb to show
what youre talking about, when you dont want to say it after the verb.
24
3.4 Compound subjects
Ndi a ni funa.
I love you.
No zwi pfa?
Did you hear that?
If youre using two nouns in the subject of your sentence, you change the
noun class so its plural.
If the things youre talking about are from different noun classes, its best
not to put them both at the beginning of the sentence. Instead, move one
to the end.
When something is from the Tshi-Zwi class, you can make it bigger by
upgrading it to the Li-Ma class. You can make it smaller by changing the
class to Ku.
25
3 Advanced Grammar
3.5.1 Verbs
Tou also seems to be To trivialize a verb (that is, to say that youre just doing something),
used along with you can put tou in front of the verb. This has the same effect of saying
exclamations.
fhedzi (only) at the end of the sentence. Tou can be used alone or in
conjunction with khou, and the order doesnt seem to matter.
3.6 Comparison
To say that something happened after something else, you can use u
bva hafho.
To say something is better, you can use funesa to say that you like it
more. There is a more accurate and more complicated way to say it using
the adjective kwine, but this will suffice.
3.7 Occupations
26
3.8 Exclamations
3.8 Exclamations
In some areas, people will use fixed exclamations at the end of sentences.
You can see them in the dictionary as the weirdest-looking words. They
dont seem to be used much in practice, but theyre probably more popular
east of Thohoyandou.
27
4 Conversation
This guide is not intended to be a resource for vocabulary, but just the
same, here are some phrases you should know. Keep in mind that every
village is different and your site might or might not use these.
Ee. Yes.
Hai. No.
Khamusi. Maybe.
29
4 Conversation
vhuswa pap
muladza leftover pap
makoko dried pap
mugayo mielie meal
tshidamba samp
randavhula rondaval
magwinya fatcakes
delele slimy muroho
magege termites
matoko cow pie
nzie locust
bapu grasshopper
mashondzha mopani worms
masenga beadwork
vha-musanda chief
musanda royal house
minada chicken feet
khwanda animal feet
30