Sekele is the northern language of the ÃÂKung dialect continuum. It was widespread in southern Angola before the Angolan Civil War, but those varieties are now spoken principally among a diaspora in northern Namibia. There are also a number of dialects spoken in far northern Namibia.
Sekele is known by a number of names. "Sekele" itself derives from Vasekele, the Angolan Bantu name. It is also known as Northern ÃÂKung, Northern ÃÂXuun, and Northern Ju. Two of the Angolan varieties have gone by the outdated term ÃÂüOÃÂKung (or ÃÂüO ÃÂuà  , "Forest ÃÂKung") and Maligo (short for "Sekele Maligo"). There are several Namibian dialects, of which the best-known is Ekoka.
There is a division between the northernmost dialects, formerly known as Angolan ÃÂKung or Northern ÃÂKung, and the more southern dialects of northernmost Namibia, which are known as Western ÃÂKung or North-Central ÃÂKung, as well as between them and the eastern dialect of Kavango ÃÂKung. These northern dialects include:
The Okongo, Ovambo, and Mpunguvlei dialects may duplicate (W1) and (K) or be additional forms.
A dialect of Angolan Sekele currently being investigated by linguists has been labeled Mangetti Dune ÃÂKung, and is spoken by a resettled diaspora community of 500âÂÂ1000 in Namibia and South Africa in the settlements of Mangetti Dune and Omtaku, east of Grootfontein, Namibia; and in Schmidtsdrif, west of Kimberley, South Africa.
Mangetti Dune ÃÂKung has clicks with four places of articulation, . A reported distinction between dental lateral and postalveolar lateral clicks has not been confirmed by further research. These clicks come in the same eight series as in Grootfontein ÃÂKung, represented with the palatal articulation: