Yao language

This article is about the African language. For the group of Southeast Asian languages, see Mienic languages. For the extinct language of Trinidad, see Yao language (Trinidad).

Yao is a Bantu language in Africa with approximately two million speakers in Malawi, and half a million each in Tanzania and Mozambique. There are also some speakers in Zambia. In Malawi, the main dialect is Mangochi, mostly spoken around Lake Malawi. In Mozambique, the main dialects are Makale and Massaninga. The language has also gone by several other names in English, including chiYao or ciYao (the prefixed form), Achawa, Adsawa, Adsoa, Ajawa, Ayawa, Ayo, Ayao, Djao, Haiao, Hiao, Hyao, Jao, Veiao, and waJao.^[4]

Yao
chiYao
Native to	Malawi, Mozambique, Tanzania
Ethnicity	Yao
Native speakers	3.7 million (2017–2020)^[1]
Language family	Niger–Congo? Atlantic–Congo Volta-Congo Benue–Congo Bantoid Southern Bantoid Bantu Rufiji–Ruvuma Ruvuma Yao–Mwera Yao
Writing system	Latin
Official status
Recognised minority language in	Malawi
Language codes
ISO 639-2	yao
ISO 639-3	yao
Glottolog	yaoo1241
Guthrie code	P.21^[2]
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.

Person	'Myao
People	WaYao
Language	chiYao
Country	Uyao^[3]

In Malawi, most Yao speakers live in the Southern Region near the southeast tip of Lake Malawi and bordering Mozambique to the east. In Mozambique most speakers live in Niassa Province from the eastern shore of Lake Malawi (Lago Niassa) to the Lugenda River up to where it meets the Rovuma River. In Tanzania most speakers live in the south central, Mtwara Region, Masasi district and in the Ruvuma Region, Tunduru district, east of Lake Malawi along the Mozambican border.

In common with very many vernacular languages in Africa, it has historically enjoyed little official recognition, and literary work in the region where Yao is spoken has taken place in such languages as Arabic, English, German and Portuguese.

Phonology

The phonology of Yao is shown below.^[5]

Consonants

		Labial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar
Plosive/ Affricate	voiceless	p	t	t͡ʃ	k
	voiced	b	d	d͡ʒ	ɡ
Fricative			s
Nasal		m	n	ɲ	ŋ
Approximant		ʋ	l	j	w

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i     iː		u     uː
Mid	e     eː		o     oː
Open		a     aː

Tones

Like most Bantu languages, tone plays a role in Yao phonology and morphology. See Mtenje (1990) for discussion of Malawian Yao tone. See Ngunga (1997) for detailed presentation of the segmental phonology of Mozambican Yao.

Orthography

As in English, unvoiced plosives are aspirated and voiced plosives are not. There are conventionally only five 'pure' vowels, viz. a, e, i, o, u, though there is some variation in vowel length. Yao is minimally tonal language, as is common in Bantu languages.

In each of the main three countries where Yao is spoken, the orthography differs widely, and there is a low literacy rate. In Tanzania, the orthography is based on that of Swahili, whereas in Malawi it is based on that of Chewa. The Malawian form uses the following characters:

Letter:

A

B

Ch

D

E

G

I

J/Dy

K

L

Ly

M

N

Ng'

Ny

O

P

S

T

U

W

Ŵ

Y

Value:

a

b

tʃ

d

e~ɛ

ɡ

i

dʒ

k

l

ʎ

m

n

ŋ

ɲ

ɔ~o

p

ʂ

tʰ

u

w

ʋ

j

Macrons can be used to prevent ambiguity that would otherwise arise due to the lack of representation of vowel length.^[6][7]

Grammar

Yao is an SVO language. Like all Bantu languages, Yao is agglutinative, with a highly regular paradigm of verbal inflection, and its nouns placed in a variety of classes indicated by prefixes, these partially corresponding to actual categories of objects or people. To each class is associated a characteristic, used in the formation of pronouns and concord links, prefixes used before verbs governed by, and adjectives describing, a noun of the given class.

Noun classes

Class	Prefix	Class characteristic	Used for
1	m-, mu-, mw-	ju	persons singular
2	ŵa-, a-, acha-, achi-	ŵa	persons plural
3	m-, mu-, mw-	u	living things singular
4	mi-	ji	living things plural
5	li-, ly-	li	miscellaneous singular
6	ma-	ga	plurals of class 5
7	chi-, ch'-	chi	miscellaneous singular
8	i-, y-	i	plurals of class 7
9	n-, ny-, mb-, (nw-)	ji	miscellaneous singular
10	n-, ny-, mb-, (nw-)	si	plurals of class 9
11	lu-	lu	like 9, also singulars of class 10
12	ka-	ka	diminutives singular
13	tu-	tu	plurals of class 13
14	u-	u	collective and abstract, no plural; also some singulars of class 6
15	ku, kw-	ku	infinitives
16	(pa-)	pa	locality (at)
17	(ku-, kwa-)	ku	locality (to)
18	(mu-, mwa-)	mu	locality (in)

The corresponding concord links are identical to the nominal prefixes except in the cases of classes 1 and 2, which have concord links 'mb-' and 'a-' respectively. The convention of including classes 16, 17 and 18 deviates from the traditional Bantu system, their prefixes being more properly prepositional or case determiners.

Verbal forms

The personal forms are given below, with informal forms given in brackets.

Personal form prefix	English equivalent (pronoun)
n-, ni-	I
(u-)	(thou)
a-	he, she, it, you
tu-	we
m-, mu-, mw-	you
ŵa-, a-	they (he, you)

There are affirmative and negative forms of the verb, each with approximately the following divisions:

Indicative mood

As in many Bantu languages, this is characterised by an ending 'a'. Present, immediate future, present perfect, past and past perfect tenses are distinguished, the last being irregular in formation.

Subjunctive mood

The subjunctive mood is similar in form to the indicative, but as in many Bantu languages, the final 'a' is changed to 'e'. It can be used as a polite imperative, and is usually associated with subordinate clauses.

Imperative

To form the 'ordinary' (often less polite) imperative, the simple stem may be used, or 'n' may be prefixed to the indicative, or the continuative suffixes '-ga' or '-je' may be added.

Pronouns

The personal pronouns relate only to classes 1 and 2. Other pronouns are formed from the class links. These pronouns, as a common Bantu feature, are absolute, in that they stand alone from the rest of the sentence: for nominative accusative and prepositional forms, affixes must be used. The third person pronouns depend on noun class, as explained above.

Absolute pronoun	English equivalent (subject pronoun, object pronoun)
une	I, me
(ugwe)	thou, thee
uwe	we, us
umwe	you

These forms may be combined according to certain normal Bantu laws of vowel elision with prefixes such as 'na' (with, and).

There are also several demonstratives, most of which form triples ('this one', 'that one nearby', and 'that one far away')- that is, triple deixis is used.

See also

• Yao people (East Africa)
• Bantu languages

References

1. Yao at Ethnologue (26th ed., 2023)  
2. Jouni Filip Maho, 2009.
3. "The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland". Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland. 25 April 1872 – via Google Books.
4. Cite error: The named reference e17 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
5. Ngunga, Armindo Saúl Atelela (1997). Lexical Phonology and Morphology in the Ciyao Verb Stem. Ann Arbor: UMI.
6. Sanderson, Meredith (1922). A Yao Grammar. Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, London.
7. Ngunga, Armindo (2002). "Elementos de gramática da língua Yao". Imprensa Universitária, Universidade Eduardo Mondlane, Maputo.

Bibliography

• Centre for Language Studies (Zomba, Malawi) "Amendments and/or Additional Rules to Ciyawo Orthography 2010"
• Dicks, Ian & Dollar, Shawn (2010) "A Practical Guide to Understanding Ciyawo"
• Hetherwick, Alexander (1889), "Introductory Handbook of the Yao Language"
• Hetherwick, Alexander (1902), "A Handbook of the Yao Language"
• Kaunjika, David Jones (2006), "A Chiyao course in three languages", Montfort Media, Balaka, Malawi
• Yusuf Jonas Msume (2017) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yao_people_(East_Africa)
• Mtenje, Al (1990), Verb morphology and tone assignment in Chiyao. Afrikanistische Arbeitspapiere (AAP) 22. 41-59.
• Ngunga, Armindo (1997), Lexical Phonology and Morphology of the CiYao Verb Stem. University of California, Berkeley, PhD dissertation. https://escholarship.org/content/qt3xw7j0c2/qt3xw7j0c2_noSplash_5b3f6edf3cbb24dad546d3d22b4de150.pdf
• Sanderson, George Meredith (1922), "A Yao Grammar"
• Sanderson, George Meredith (1954), "A dictionary of the Yao language"
• SIL Mozambique, "Linguas de Moçambique Vocabulario de CIYAO 2014-10-28 at the Wayback Machine"
• Steere, Edward (1871) "Collections for a Handbook of the Yao Language"
• U.S. Peace Corps manual
• Whiteley, Wilfred Howell (1966), "A study of Yao sentences"