Chivabwe

Chivabwe was created by Duncan Junior Kutya, a high school student Zimbabwe who is currently studying in South Africa. He started working on it in 2024. Initially it was a personal shorthand system for writing notes in Shona (chiShona), a Bantu language spoken mainly in Zimbabwe. Later it was redesigned to make it more geometric, and adapted to write other languages of Zimbabwe, such as Kalanga, Ndebele and Ndau, languages of southern Africa, such as Zulu, Xhosa and Swahli, and other Bantu languages, as well as Khoisan languages.

The aim is to create a script that can be used to write many of the languages of southern, eastern and central Africa, and which represents their sounds better than the Latin alphabet. It is an original script with influences from the Mwangwego, Vai, Zaghawa, Tifinagh and N'ko scripts. The name Chivabwe comes from the Shona words chi (writing), vanhu ve (people of) and dzimba dzeBwe (houses of stone).

Notable features

Type of writing system: hybrid abugida
Writing direction: left to right in horizontal lines.
Used to write: Shona (chiShona) and other languages of Africa.
Each symbol represents a consonant plus a vowel. They can also represent several consonants plus a vowel.
Tone marks represent a small set of core tones, and can be used to represent other tones by combining them together.
There are different parts of the script that serve different functions: Chichebwe - the alphabetic base characters, Chichabwe - the combination characters, Chihwitidzobwe - the emotional puntuation system, Chipetakabwe - the abbreviated script, Ndáà = auxiliary script used for stylistic, informal, or decorative purposes, plus numerals and puntuation.
Chihwitidzobwe or emotional puntuation marks, can be used to convey tones such as neutral, happy, sad, angry or confused.

Chivabwe script

Download an alphabet chart for Chivabwe (Excel)

Sample text (Shona)

Sample text in Chivabwe in Shona

Transliteration

Vanhu vese vanozvarwa vakasununguka uye vakaenzana mune zviremera nekodzero dzavo. Vakapiwa pfungwa nehana saka vanofanira kubatana nemweya wehukama.

Translation

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.
(Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights)

Sample words

Sample words in Chivabwe

Information about Shona | Phrases | Numbers | Tower of Babel

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