Introduction

 
Lomwe is spoken by 1,630,000 people living in Mozambique in the Zambezia, Niassa, and Nampula provinces and Alto Molocue.

Alternate names for Lomwe include Acilowe, Alomwe, Chilowe, Cilowe, Elomwe, Ilomwe, Ingulu, Lomue, Mihavane, Mihavani, Mihawani, Ngulu, Nguru, Walomwe, West Makhuwa, and Western Makua. The Ethnologue code is ngl.

The classification is Niger-Congo, Atlantic-Congo, Volta-Congo, Benue-Congo, Bantoid, Southern, Narrow Bantu, Central, P, Makhuwa. Lomwe has some similarities to Makhuwa [vmw] and Chuwabu [chw].

Lomwe speakers highly value their language and language development was started many years ago. In 1983 the Lomwe New Testament was published.

There is still much work to do, but we, the compilers have decided to publish this work-in-progress, in order to document the work we have done so far. We welcome any comments you have; please leave a message on the Contact Us page.