Lozi

Lozi, also known as Silozi and Rozi, is a Bantu language spoken by the Lozi people of southwestern Zambia and northwestern Zimbabwe. It is one of the official languages of Zambia, along with English and seven other African languages. Lozi is a tonal language, with two basic tones, high and low. The high tone is indicated by a /á/ or /à/ at the end of a syllable, while the low tone is indicated by a /ă/ or /â/. There are also some words which have a falling tone, indicated by a /à/ at the beginning of the word. Lozi has a simple grammatical structure, with few inflections. Nouns are not inflected for gender or number, and there are no articles. Verbs are inflected for person and tense, but not for number. The vocabulary of Lozi includes many loanwords from English, due to the influence of British colonial rule. However, the vast majority of words are of Bantu origin. Lozi is written using the Latin alphabet, with some additional letters to represent tones.