Budya, also called Buja, is spoken principally in the Mutoko area of northeastern Zimbabwe. Because of its location, it was often classified in the Korekore group of Shonic languages, but its features are more typical of N40 languages spoken nearby in Mozambique. Accordingly, it should be considered part of the Nyungwe-Sena group like Hwesa and Tonga along the Mozambican-Zimbabwean border.
- Name used by speakers: Buja, chiBuja
- Number of speakers: No reliable recent separate figure is available.
- Usage: It is only a spoken community variety. In formal education, government, publishing and national broadcasting, speakers generally use Standard Shona.
- First written: a Budya wordlist was recorded by Clement M. Doke during his Shona dialect survey of 1929–30, with results published in Report on the Unification of the Shona Dialects and A Comparative Study in Shona Phonetics, both in 1931. Another wordlist was collected in 1929 by F. Posselt (NADA 7:80-95).
- Contact: Budya has been in contact with Korekore and Zezuru, while Standard Shona and English exert increasing influence through education and wider communication.
- Distinctive features: One conspicuous feature is the use of Budya j rather than Standard Shona dy, e.g. Standard Shona kudya ‘eat’ ~ Budya kuja, and kudyara ‘plant’ ~ Budya kujara. Like Manyika, Budya also has w in some environments corresponding to Standard Shona v.
Sources for SBED entries
- Hannan's Standard Shona Dictionary (1984) marks Budya forms as "Ko(B)"