Nande language

Nande
Yira
Ndandi
Native to	Democratic Republic of the Congo
Region	Nord-Kivu province
Native speakers	(900,000 cited 1991)[1]
Language family	Niger–Congo Atlantic–Congo Benue–Congo Bantoid Bantu Northeast Bantu Great Lakes Bantu Konzo Nande
Language codes
ISO 639-3	nnb
Glottolog	nand1264[2]
Guthrie code	JD.42[3]

Nande, also known as (Oru)Ndandi and Yira, is a Bantu language spoken in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The Nande of Congo and the Konjo people of Uganda are a single ethnic group, which they call Yira (Bayira). They trace their origins to the Ruwenzori Mountains between the two countries. The languages are close enough to be considered divergent dialects. Nande has a number of dialects of its own: Nande proper, Kumbule, Mate, Tangi, Sanza, Shu, Songola (Songoora, Nyangala), Swaga / Kira (in Nande, all of these are prefixed with eki-).

For the varieties of this language known as Shu we are given the information ^[4] that another language, "EkiShukaali" was formerly spoken by the women, the AvaShukaali. This may be a specific reference to some kind of "secret jargon" into which the girls, and not boys, were initiated.

Some of the Nande of Congo have a patron–vassal relationship with the Efé Pygmies.

References

1. Nande at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
2. Nordhoff, Sebastian; Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2013). "Nande". Glottolog. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
3. Jouni Filip Maho, 2009. New Updated Guthrie List Online
4. Margaret Arminel Bryan, compiler, The Bantu Languages of Africa, Oxford University Press 1959 ,page 96.