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Language code: sna

Technical information about ISO 639 language code sna

Documentation

The table below provides technical details for the Shona language, designated by the sna code from the ISO 639-2 standard.

Code

sna

Name

Official

Shona

Native

ChiShona

Text direction

Left-to-Right

Language varieties
ZezuruKarangaKorekoreManyikaNdau
Related languages
KalangaNambyaChichewa (Chewa/Nyanja)TongaNorthern Ndebele
Key facts
It is a Bantu language with roughly 10–14 million native speakersShona has a simple five-vowel inventory but employs a two-tone (high/low) system that changes word meaningits modern Latin-based orthography was standardized in 1955 after missionary and academic collaborationthe language is highly agglutinative, allowing a single verb to carry several affixes for subject, tense, aspect and objectthe first novel written entirely in Shona, “Feso” by Solomon Mutswairo, appeared in 1957.
Sample phrase

Mhoro, uri sei?

Character encodings

UTF-8, UTF-16, UTF-32

Supported in Localizely

The Shona language, identified by the code sna, falls under the 'Individual' category in terms of its scope and is classified as 'Living' by its type.

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