Umbundu, which belongs to the Umbundu Group of Bantu (Guthrie R10), is spoken in central Angola in the provinces of Bie, Huambo, and Benguela. Umbundu should not be confused with Kimbumdu (Guthrie H21).
World Almanac (1998) estimates 4 million Umbundu speakers. Among earlier estimates, Alexandre (1981) notes at least 1.5 million speakers. The Angolan 1960 census listed 1,746,109 speakers of Umbundu. Voegelin and Voegelin (1977) list 1,700,000, and Heine (1970) points out that were lingua franca speakers included, the figure would be around 1.8 million.
Umbundu is one of the national languages of Angola, where it is being used extensively in literacy projects. It is also heard on broadcasts of Radio National de Angola.
A UNESCO-sponsored literacy project in 1981-1982 has helped standardize an orthography.
It is not known how many sets of learning materials are needed, although the existence of a standardized orthography suggests one set is sufficient.
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