Kimbundu

Consonants

Allophones:

[ɸ] and [β] are allophones of /p/ and /b/, respectively, before /a/ and /u/. The phoneme /l/ is phonetically a flap [ɾ], a voiced plosive [d] or its palatalized version [dʲ] when before the front high vowel /i/. In the same way, the alveolars /s/, /z/ and /n/ are palatalized to [ʃ], [ʒ] and [ɲ], respectively, before [i]. There may be an epenthesis of [g] after /ŋ/ in word medial positions, thus creating a phonetic cluster [ŋg] in a process of fortition.

There is long distance nasal harmony, in which /l/ is realized as [n] if the previous morphemes contain /m/ or /n/, but not prenasalized stops.

Vowels

There are two contrasting tones: a high (á) and a low tone (à). There is also a downstep in cases of tonal sandhi.

Vowel harmony

There is vowel harmony in two groups (the high vowels /i, u/ and the mid and low vowels /e, o, a/) that applies only for verbal morphology. In some morphemes, vowels may be consistently deleted to avoid a hiatus.^[6]

European Portuguese

There is a small number of words of Kimbundu origin and many of those are indirect loans, borrowed via Angolan Portuguese.

The examples generally understood by most or all speakers of Angolan and European Portuguese include

bué (pronounced [bwɛ], "very, a lot"),^[8]

cota ([ˈkɔtɐ], "old person"^[9])

mambo ([ˈmɐ̃bu])