ABSTRACT
Under Zone P30, Guthrie lists the following ‘languages’: Makhuwa, Lomwe, Ngulu, and Chuabo. This characterization of the zone is problematic in several ways.
Although speakers of some speech varieties may identify their language as ‘Elomwe’ and others may identify their language as ‘Emakhuwa’, we know of no evidence that this self-differentiation is linguistically based. The study of Makhuwa dialectology is not sufficiently advanced to determine whether a classification of dialects based on linguistic features would result in any bifurcation along a Makhuwa/Lomwe dimension. Specifically, it is unclear whether there are linguistic properties whose distribution coincides with either self-identifed Lomwe speech varieties or self-identified Makhuwa speech varieties. For example, in the (sparse) literature, it is said that Lomwe uses the affricates c [tI ] and ch [tIh] in place of the characteristic Makhuwa post-alveolar stops tt and tth. However, I have studied three dialects in Malawi (Emihavani, Emunyamwelo, and Ekokholani) whose speakers consider their language Lomwe but who use the stops tt and tth rather than the corresponding affricates. Given the uncertainty of a reliable Lomwe/Makhuwa distinction, I shall use the term ‘Makhuwa’ to include ‘Lomwe’ whenever the distinction between the two is not of immediate relevance.
