Kimbundu belongs to the Kimbundu Group of Bantu (Guthrie H21) and is spoken in the Angolan provinces of Luanda, Bengo, Malanje, and Cuauza-Norte. Kimbundu should not be confused with Umbundu (Guthrie R10).
Alexandre (1981) estimates around 150,000 speakers. Voegelin and Voegelin (1977) list one million speakers. World Almanac (1998) gives a figure of 3 million.
Kimbundu is one of the national languages of Angola and is being used in literacy projects in that country.
A UNESCO sponsored literacy project in 1981-1982 has possibly helped to standardize an orthography. Tone is not marked in these literacy materials.
It is not known how many sets of learning materials would be needed.
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