An Outline of Cinyanja Grammar

by Dorothea Lehmann

This is the third in a series of publications on Zambian languages and grammar. The intention of the series is to boast the meagre scholarship and availability of educational materials on Zambian languages, which became particularly in urgent in 1996, following the decision of the Zambian government to revert to the policy of using local languages as media of instruction. This volume provides a grammatical sketch of the language commonly known as Nyanja, the mother tongue of some 0.75 million Zambians, and the second largest language group in the country. Nyanja is used by a large population as a second language, is the lingua franca of the armed forces, and is used in official publications and radio broadcasts. It is also spoken in parts of Mozambique and Malawi. The survey is divided into sections on sound systems, morphology and sentence structure.

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