Zigula is a Bantu language of Tanzania and of Somalia, where it is known as Mushunguli (Mushungulu). It is best known for the Mushunguli dialect

Mushunguli

Mushunguli is spoken by about 23,000 people from the Bantu

Somali Bantu

The Somali Bantu are a minority ethnic group in Somalia. They primarily reside in southern Somalia, near the Juba and Shabelle rivers, and are the descendants of people from various Bantu ethnic groups originating from what are modern-day Tanzania, Malawi and Mozambique who were sold into Somalia...

 minority ethnic of southern Somalia, is Jamaame

Jamaame

Jamame, also spelt Jamaame or Giamame and known in Italian as Margherita, is a densely populated town in southern Somalia.-Overview:Jamame is situated in the Jubbada Hoose region...

, Kismayo, Mogadishu

Mogadishu

Mogadishu , popularly known as Xamar, is the largest city in Somalia and the nation's capital. Located in the coastal Benadir region on the Indian Ocean, the city has served as an important port for centuries....

, and the Juba River valley.

It shows affinities with other adjacent Bantu varieties. In particular, Mushunguli shares strong lexical and grammatical similarities with the language of the Zigua people who inhabit 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...

, one of the areas in south-eastern Africa where many Bantu in Somalia are known to have been captured from as slaves during the 19th century. 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...

 notes that the Mushunguli in Tanzania are the Wazegua.

Many Mushunguli Bantu men also speak as working languages the Afro-Asiatic

Afro-Asiatic languages

The Afroasiatic languages , also known as Hamito-Semitic, constitute one of the world's largest language families, with about 375 living languages...

 Maay and Somali

Somali language

The Somali language is a member of the East Cushitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family. Its nearest relatives are Afar and Oromo. Somali is the best documented of the Cushitic languages, with academic studies beginning before 1900....

 languages of their Somali

Somali people

Somalis are an ethnic group located in the Horn of Africa, also known as the Somali Peninsula. The overwhelming majority of Somalis speak the Somali language, which is part of the Cushitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family...

 neighbors.

Phonology

There is no official or traditional orthography

Orthography

The orthography of a language specifies a standardized way of using a specific writing system to write the language. Where more than one writing system is used for a language, for example Kurdish, Uyghur, Serbian or Inuktitut, there can be more than one orthography...

 for Mushunguli. However, spelling practices from related Bantu languages can easily be adopted to render the language with minimal phonetic diacritic

Diacritic

A diacritic is a glyph added to a letter, or basic glyph. The term derives from the Greek διακριτικός . Diacritic is both an adjective and a noun, whereas diacritical is only an adjective. Some diacritical marks, such as the acute and grave are often called accents...

s.

Vowels

	Front Front vowel A front vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a front vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far in front as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Front vowels are sometimes also...	Back Back vowel A back vowel is a type of vowel sound used in spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a back vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far back as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Back vowels are sometimes also called dark...
High	ɪ	ʊ
Mid Mid vowel A mid vowel is a vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a mid vowel is that the tongue is positioned mid-way between an open vowel and a close vowel...	ɛ	ɔ
Open Open vowel An open vowel is defined as a vowel sound in which the tongue is positioned as far as possible from the roof of the mouth. Open vowels are sometimes also called low vowels in reference to the low position of the tongue...	a

Consonants

nasals	m	n	ɲ	ŋ
voiceless stops	p	t	tʃ	k
voiced implosives	ɓ	ɗ	ʄ	ɠ
voiceless fricatives	f	s	ʃ
voiced fricatives	v	z ~ ð
sonorants	w	l, ɾ	j	ɦ

The fricative [z] freely varies with [ð].

Tone

Vowel length is not distinctive, but phonetic length is especially associated with falling tones as in chîga 'leg'. The tone system is similar to that of Tanzanian Zigua.