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Language code: ve

Technical information about ISO 639 language code ve

Documentation

The table below provides technical details for the Venda language, designated by the ve code from the ISO 639-1 standard.

Code

ve

Name

Official

Venda

Native

Tshivenḓa

Family
Bantu
Text direction

Left-to-Right

Language varieties
TshimbedziTshiilafuri (South-western Venda)Tshiphani (North-western Venda)Tshilembethu
Related languages
Tsonga (Xitsonga)ShonaNorthern Sotho (Sepedi)Tswana
Key facts
Uses special Latin letters with under-dots such as ḓ, ṱ, and ṋHas a noun-class system with about 16 classes, typical of Bantu languagesTone is phonemic and contrasts up to four pitch patternsVocabulary shows noticeable borrowing and convergence with neighbouring Sotho–Tsonga and Shona varietiesFirst complete Bible translation appeared in 1936 and helped to stabilise modern orthography
Sample phrase

Ndaa, ni khou ita hani?

Character encodings

UTF-8, UTF-16, UTF-32

Supported in Localizely

Venda belongs to the Niger-Congo language family, specifically to the Bantu subgroup. It is one of the official languages in South Africa, and it is used in some parts of Zimbabwe. It is written using the Latin script (Venda alphabet). It is estimated that there are around 3 million speakers worldwide.

Language presence globally

Speakers

South Africa

2.9M

Zimbabwe

91K

*The graph shows a rough estimate of Venda speakers in countries where it is an official or minority language.

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