This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA.
Yeyi (autoethnonym Shiyɛyi) is a Bantu language spoken by many of the approximately 50,000 Yeyi people along the Okavango River in Namibia and Botswana. Yeyi, influenced by Juu languages, is one of several Bantu languages along the Okavango with clicks. Indeed, it has the largest known inventory of clicks of any Bantu language, with dental, alveolar, palatal, and lateral articulations. Though most of its older speakers prefer Yeyi in normal conversation, it is being gradually phased out in Botswana by a popular move towards Tswana, with Yeyi only being learned by children in a few villages. Yeyi speakers in the Caprivi Strip of north-eastern Namibia, however, retain Yeyi in villages (including Linyanti), but may also speak the regional lingua franca, Lozi.
The main dialect is called Shirwanga. A slight majority of Botswana Yeyi are monolingual in the national language, Tswana, and the majority of the rest are bilingual.
^Yeyi at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
^Jouni Filip Maho, 2009. New Updated Guthrie List Online
Yeyi (autoethnonym Shiyɛyi) is a Bantu language spoken by many of the approximately 50,000 Yeyi people along the Okavango River in Namibia and Botswana...
Yeyi may refer to: Ye County, Henan, China, formerly known as YeyiYeyi people Yeyilanguage This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the...
the Okavango River where, apparently, the Yeyilanguage borrowed the clicks from a West Kalahari Khoe language; a separate development led to a smaller...
The MaYeyi (also: Yeyi or Bayei) are Bantu-speaking people of north-western Botswana and north-eastern Namibia. The Yeyi immigrated to the area in the...
heaviest functional load of click consonants in a Bantu language (approximately tied with Yeyi), with one count finding that 10% of basic vocabulary items...
and Otjiherero by 9%. Other native languages include the Bantu languages Setswana, Gciriku, Fwe, Kuhane, Mbukushu, Yeyi; and the Khoisan Naro, ǃXóõ, Kung-Ekoka...
are only found in the various Khoisan language families of southern Africa and in the neighboring Yeyilanguage. Kirshenbaum assigns ⟨c!⟩ indifferently...
An endangered language is a language that it is at risk of falling out of use, generally because it has few surviving speakers. If it loses all of its...
The Bantu languages (English: UK: /ˌbænˈtuː/, US: /ˈbæntuː/ Proto-Bantu: *bantʊ̀) are a language family of about 600 languages that are spoken by the Bantu...
borrowed clicks as part of a sprachbund, as the Bantu Nguni languages (Zulu, Xhosa etc.) and Yeyi did; and Neither the ancestors of the Juǀʼhoan nor those...
various Khoisan languages families of southern Africa and in the neighboring Yeyilanguage. All Khoisan languages, and a few Bantu languages, have glottalized...
Sotho; Yeyi in Botswana; and Mbukushu, Kwangali, and Gciriku in the Caprivi Strip. Clicks are spreading to a few additional neighboring languages. Of these...
are only found in the various Khoisan language families of southern Africa and in the neighboring Yeyilanguage. Ladefoged, Peter; Traill, Anthony (1994-01-01)...
Khoisan language families of southern Africa and in some neighboring Bantu languages such as Yeyi. All Khoisan languages, and a few Bantu languages, have...
Frank (2008), A Grammar of Yeyi: A Bantu Language of Southern Africa. R. Köppe. Holzknecht, Susanne (1989). The Markham Languages of Papua New Guinea. Pacific...
Bantu languages include Yeyi (or 'Yei' or 'Yeeyi'),[better source needed] Mbukushu, Gciriku (or 'Dciriku'), Fwe, Totela, and Subiya. The Silozi language is...
the group. For example, a singular Yeyi person is called a Muyeyi, the Yeyi people are called Wayeyi, the Yeyilanguage is called Shiyeyi. A singular Tswana...
language families of southern Africa and in some neighboring Bantu languages, such as Yeyi and Fwe. All Khoisan languages, and a few Bantu languages,...
Khoisan languages of Africa have them (the Khoe, Tuu, and Kx'a language families, Sandawe, and Hadza), as does Dahalo and the Bantu languagesYeyi and Xhosa...
numbers in Botswana and Zambia. Their language is the Ikuhane language (Chikuhane) also known as the Subia language (Chisubia). They get their name from...
Otjiherero by 9%. Other native languages include the Bantu languages Setswana, Gciriku, Fwe, Chikuhane, Mbukushu, Yeyi; and the Khoisan Naro, ǃXóõ, Kung-Ekoka...
languages as interpreted by Harald Hammarström, and following the Guthrie classification. Bantu languages Guthrie classification of Bantu languages Classification...
Southwest Bantu languages R40 Yeyi R20 Ovambo, R30 Herero, and R10 apart from Umbundu have been grouped together as Southwest Bantu. Yeyi forms its own...
Global Information