Kimatuumbi language
Encyclopedia
Matuumbi, also known as Kimatumbi, is a language spoken in Tanzania
Tanzania
The United Republic of Tanzania is a country in East Africa bordered by Kenya and Uganda to the north, Rwanda, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the west, and Zambia, Malawi, and Mozambique to the south. The country's eastern borders lie on the Indian Ocean.Tanzania is a state...

 in the Kipatimu region of the Kilwa District, south of the Rufiji river. It is a Bantu language
Bantu languages
The Bantu languages constitute a traditional sub-branch of the Niger–Congo languages. There are about 250 Bantu languages by the criterion of mutual intelligibility, though the distinction between language and dialect is often unclear, and Ethnologue counts 535 languages...

, P13 in Guthrie's
Malcolm Guthrie
Malcolm Guthrie , professor of Bantu languages, is known primarily for his classification of Bantu languages...

 classification. Kimatuumbi is closely related to the Ngindo, Mbunga, Rufiji and Ndengereko languages. It is spoken by about 70 000 people, according to the Ethnologue
Ethnologue
Ethnologue: Languages of the World is a web and print publication of SIL International , a Christian linguistic service organization, which studies lesser-known languages, to provide the speakers with Bibles in their native language and support their efforts in language development.The Ethnologue...

.

Matuumbi is the Kimatuumbi word for 'hills' (singular form: tuumbi, class 5/6). Ki- is a Bantu noun class
Noun class
In linguistics, the term noun class refers to a system of categorizing nouns. A noun may belong to a given class because of characteristic features of its referent, such as sex, animacy, shape, but counting a given noun among nouns of such or another class is often clearly conventional...

prefix attached to nouns of the class that includes languages (cf. Kiswahili, Kikongo).
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