Shona language
1
7.9
- noun
- She is studying the Shona language to better understand Zimbabwean culture.
Examples
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Many traditional stories have been passed down orally in the Shona language.
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Several million people in Zimbabwe speak Shona language as their mother tongue.
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The Shona language is rich in proverbs.
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Many people in Zimbabwe speak the Shona language.
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In Zimbabwe, many people speak the Shona language as their mother tongue.
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The children learned to count in the Shona language during their lessons.
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Some words in the Shona language have different meanings depending on their context.
Synonyms
1
8.2
A language spoken by many people in Zimbabwe and nearby countries
A language spoken by many people in Zimbabwe and used as one of the country's main languages
Surface Forms
Morphology
The phrase is fully compositional: 'Shona' names an ethnic/language group and 'language' identifies the speech system, so the combined meaning ('the language called Shona') is directly derivable from the parts. This naming pattern (proper name + language) is cross-linguistically common and would be immediately clear to a learner who already knows both constituents.
Etymology
Shona language comes from the name of the Shona people who have lived for a long time in the area now called Zimbabwe. Their everyday speech was called 'Shona', so today Shona language means the language spoken by those people.