On the origins of Kunda, “a language without a land” – OriKunda

The OriKunda project aims to revise the unique history of the Kunda people and the Kunda language from their genesis to the present day, through historical linguistics, anthropologic linguistics and sociolinguistics. The Kunda were troops of slave soldiers originating from different tribes and serving in the territories occupied by Portuguese settlers (‘prazos’) in central Mozambique during colonial times. Out of their common social identity was born an ethnic identity involving the creation of a vehicular language, Kunda, resulting from an intra-Bantu interbreeding. With the collapse of the ‘prazos’ system in the 19th century and the liberation of slaves, the Kunda retreated westward at the confluence between the Zambezi and Luangwa rivers, which today corresponds to the cross-border area between Zambia, Mozambique and Zimbabwe.

The OriKunda project proposes to put linguistics at the service of history by redrawing the kunda epic through their language and their testimonies. What is Kunda? What does this hybrid language, created less than 4 centuries ago from typologically similar and genetically related languages, look like? What languages have participated in its development? Where can it be located in the genealogical classification of Bantu languages? What is the level of vitality of Kunda today, on the Zambian side, the Mozambican side and the Zimbabwean side? What presence, practices and perceptions of the language can be observed? What founding myth and what oral tradition do the Kunda convey? So many fascinating questions to which the OriKunda project intends to answer.