Shona language

Ndau and Kalanga are former dialects of Shona but became independent languages in 2013 because their grammar is very slightly less similar to those of Manyika, Korekore, and Zezuru.

Shona is a written standard language with an orthography and grammar that was codified during the early 20th century and fixed in the 1950s.

In the 1920s, the Rhodesian administration was faced with the challenge of preparing schoolbooks and other materials in the various languages and dialects and requested the recommendation of South African linguist Clement Doke.

Subsequently, hundreds of novels, short story collections and poetry volumes in Shona have appeared.

Maho (2009) recognizes Korekore, Zezuru, Manyika, Karanga, and Ndau as distinct languages within the Shona cluster.

This inventory is quite common cross-linguistically, with similar systems occurring in Greek, Spanish, Tagalog, Swahili and Japanese.

From 1931 to 1955, Unified Shona was written with an alphabet developed by linguist Clement Martyn Doke.

Vanhu vese vanechipo chokufunga nekuziva chakaipa nechakanaka saka vanofanira kubatana nomweya wohusahwira.