Tsonga ( ) or Xitsonga ( ) as an endonym (also known as Changana in Mozambique), is a Bantu language spoken by the Tsonga people of South Africa and Mozambique. It is mutually intelligible with Tswa and Ronga and the name "Tsonga" is often used as a cover term for all three, also sometimes referred to as Tswa-Ronga. The Xitsonga language has been standardised as a written language.
Tsonga is an official language of the Republic of South Africa, and under the name Shangani it is recognised as an official language in the Constitution of Zimbabwe. All Tswa-Ronga languages are recognised in Mozambique. It is not official in Eswatini (formerly known as Swaziland).
The first records of studies of Xitsonga by Europeans go back the Swiss missionary, Henri-Alexandre Junod, who between the years 1890 and 1920 hypothesised that the Xitsonga language (which he called the Thonga language) consolidated itself in Mozambique before the 1400s. In his own words, Junod states the following:
Further studies were carried out by Junod and other Swiss missionaries such as Henri Berthoud and Ernest Creux, who began work on a standard written language, which they called Shigwamba. The term was however unfamiliar to many of the speakers, and was later replaced with Thonga/Tsonga. Other Swiss missionaries working alongside Tsonga people translated the Christian Bible from English and Sesotho into Tsonga.
In 1996, the language was officially recognized as Xitsonga within the Constitution of South Africa (Act 108 of 1996), which declared it an official language of the nation. The standardization of the Xitsonga language has since strengthened the position of language as a medium for communication.
The name "Tsonga" is the root of Xitsonga (culture, language or ways of the Tsonga) Mutsonga (a Tsonga person), Vatsonga (Tsonga people), etc. In the language of the Vatsonga themselves, the root never appears by itself. It is Tsonga for the ease and accessibility of the wider international community.
As for the origins of the name, there are three theories. The first states that Tsonga is another pronunciation for Dzonga, which means "South" and also the name of one of the dialects of Xitsonga. The second theory is that it is an alternative spelling of the old ancestral name of the Chopi and Tembe groups, Tonga/Thonga. The other Zulu explanation for the alternative spelling of "Thonga" is that the Tembe and Rhonga people, who were the first to arrive at the Delagoa Bay and around the Natal Bay, transitioned the Rhonga "Rh" into the Zulu form of "Th". An example is rhuma (Tsonga word for "send") becoming thuma (Zulu word for the same action). The third and most accepted is that it is another pronunciation for "Rhonga", the root for the word "vurhonga" for east or the direction where the sun rises. Vurhonga also means dawn in Xitsonga. Rhonga (commonly and wrongly spelt as Ronga) is one of the Tsonga languages. The physical evidence of most Tsonga people residing along the eastern coast of Africa in the south, extending inland in a westward direction, makes this explanation especially inviting. However Junod had initially used the Ronga appellation but had also realized that the northern clans did not frequently use the name 'Ronga' as their identity name, but most certainly Tsonga is a derivation of Ronga.
Much of the written history about the Tsonga regards the aftermath of the mfecane where the Nguni people overran many of the pre-existing African tribes of South Africa, Eswatini, Mozambique, and Zimbabwe.
Tsonga is a Bantu language (Guthrie code S.53), closely related to other members to the Tswa-Ronga group (S.50):
Some dialects are subdialects but have been mentioned here for completeness. For example, Valoyi and Luleke comprise the N'walungu dialect. There is no Gwamba dialect as Gwamba is another name for Xitsonga itself. Formally Xitsonga has been called Gwamba. Tswa-Ronga dialects not considered part of the family include Pulana (Xipulana, Sepulane). What is commonly referred to as "Shangana/Changana" is not a recognised language in South Africa and is not a dialect that falls within the Xitsonga language group, as its distinctiveness stems mainly from the use of the Nguni language and grammar.
Only six Thonga/Tsonga dialects exist and these were identified by the dawn of the 1900s. These are namely xiRonga, xiHlanganu, xiBila, xiDjonga, xiN'walungu, and xiHlengwe. All other variations within South Africa are sub-dialects of the aforementioned. The dialects most spoken in the rural communities of Limpopo are the N'walungu, Bila, Hlengwe, and the Hlanganu dialects. The Xitsonga vocabulary and phonetic permutations are also largely based on these dialects (cf. Junod 1912, p. 470âÂÂ473)
For "language of", the various languages and dialects employ one or more of the following prefixes: Bi-, Chi-, Ci-, Gi-, Ici-, Ki-, Ma-, Shee-, Shi-, Txi-, Va-, Wa-, and Xi-. For "people of", they use either "Ba-" or "Va-".
Tsonga has a distinction between modal and breathy voiced consonants: vs among the obstruents (the one exception being ), and vs among the sonorants (the one exception being ). The segmental inventory is as follows:
Long vowels are written double. Nasalised vowels are not distinguished in writing; are only found in words for 'yes' and 'no', while is found in a few mimetic words. Mid vowels can vary from close-mid to open-mid; they are generally close-mid before a high vowel, or , and low-mid otherwise. Vowels may be realised as murmured when following breathy consonants.
Many of these consonants may be preceded by a nasal, but they are not prenasalised consonants: at least in word-initial position, they are nasal–obstruent sequences where the nasals are syllabic.
Different consonant sounds may alternate the place of articulation. A number of Tsonga speakers vary the affricates from alveolar to retroflex ; the latter are weakly whistled in Tsonga proper and in Changana dialect. Labiodental and dental appear in homorganic consonant clusters.
Unlike some of the Nguni languages, Tsonga has very few words with click consonants, and these vary in place between dental and postalveolar . Examples are: (mind), (wear/dress), (kneel), (phone), (earring), (compose), (Saturday).
The grammar is generally typical of Bantu languages with a subjectâÂÂverbâÂÂobject order. The structure changes to subjectâÂÂobjectâÂÂverb when addressing another person:
Almost all infinitives have the prefix ku- and end with -a.
The main exception to this is the verb â "to say" It corresponds to "ti" in many other Bantu languages. Examples of its usage include:<br /> â What do you say? (What are you saying?)<br /> â I say to you all.
In many instances the is often omitted and thus on its own can also mean "say".<br /> â They say I'm crazy.<br /> â What do they say? (What are they saying?)
Present tense<br /> The present tense is formed by simply using the personal pronoun along with the verb.<br /> â I want money,<br /> â We work all day,<br /> â Who are you looking for?<br /> â S/He knows how to walk.
Present progressive<br /> Generally, to indicate ongoing actions in the present one takes the personal pronoun, drops the and adds .<br /> â I am entering the house,<br /> â We are working right now,<br /> â You (plural) are lying,<br /> â You (singular) are lying,<br /> â S/He is lying,<br /> With the plural (they) there is no difference. Thus = "they lie" and "they are lying".
Past tense<br /> This is for in one of three ways, depending on the word.<br /> (i) Generally, one drops the from the verb and adds the prefix <br /> â I entered the house,<br /> â We worked all day,<br /> â You lied,<br /> â S/He lied,<br /> â They lied.
(ii) With verbs that end with , the past tense changes to or .<br /> â to forget,<br /> â I forgot, â you forgot, â they forgot,<br /> â To disappear,<br /> â S/He â disappeared,<br /> Words used to describe a state of being also use the past tense.<br /> â To be tired,<br /> â I am tired, â S/He is tired, â They are tired.
(iii) In many cases merely changing the last in the verb to an indicates past action.<br /> â To arrive,<br /> â S/He arrived yesterday,<br /> â I arrived yesterday,<br /> â We worked all day,<br /> â I entered the house.
Future tense<br /> This is formed by the adding in between the personal pronoun and the verb.<br /> â I will enter the house,<br /> â We will work all day,<br /> â They will work all day,<br /> â You (plural) will work all day.
Tsonga has several classes, much like other Bantu languages, which are learned through memorisation mostly. These are:
Personal pronouns in Tsonga are very similar to those of many other Bantu languages, with a few variations.
These may be classified as first person (the speaker), second person (the one spoken to), and third person (the one spoken about). They are also classified by grammatical number, i.e., singular and plural. There is no distinction between subject and object.
Each pronoun has a corresponding concord or agreement morpheme.
The vocabulary of Xitsonga is essentially similar not only to most South African languages but also other Eastern Bantu languages, for example, Kiswahili.
Tsonga, like many other African languages, have been influenced by various European colonial languages. Tsonga vocabulary includes words borrowed from English, Afrikaans, and Portuguese. Also, due to the assimilation of the Shangaan nation, it has taken some words from Nguni languages.
Words borrowed from English:
Words borrowed from Afrikaans:
Words borrowed from other Nguni languages:
Xitsonga uses the Latin alphabet. However, certain sounds are spelled using a combination of letters, which either do not exist in Indo-European languages, or may be meant to distinguish the language somewhat.
An example of this is the letter "x" taken from Portuguese orthography, which is pronounced . Therefore, the following words, [ÃÂuÃÂa], [ÃÂikolo], [ÃÂilo], are written in Tsonga as and .
Other spelling differences include the letter "c", which is pronounced . However, where the emphasis of a word is on the following vowel the letter is hardened by adding "h" this the Tsonga word -chava (fear)
A sound equivalent to the Welsh "ll" () is written "hl" in Tsonga, e.g. -hlangana (meet), -hlasela (attack), -hleka (laugh)
A whistling sound common in the language is written "sw" or "sv" in Zimbabwean ChiShona. This sound actually belongs to the "x-sw" class within the language. E.g.:
Another whistling sound is spelled "dy" but has no English equivalent, the closest being the "dr" sound in the English word "drive"
Xitsonga has been standardised as a written language. However, there are many dialects within the language that may not pronounce words as written. For example, the Tsonga bible uses the word (tell), pronounced bwe-la, however a large group of speakers would say "dzvela" instead.
The Lord's Prayer as written in the Xitsonga Bible (Bibele)
The writing system, , also known technically in Xitsonga as , is used for all Xitsonga varieties. The class 7/8 noun pairs above are represented as follows:
E. Dora Earthy, a missionary in Mozambique, published a selection of Tsonga folktales (Lenge dialect) with facing-text English translations in the 1937 volume of the journal Folklore: Part 1 contains three stories and Part 2 contains an additional seven stories.
The organisation Aidglobal published a series of four children's books in Xichangana (one of Mozambique's Tsonga languages) in 2024 written by Venâncio Calisto and Mélio Tinga, and illustrated by Suzy Bila, Marisa Bimbo da Costa, Ruben Zacarias and Samuel Djive. The Xichangana/Portuguese translations were done by Williamo Muchanga.
Henri-Alexandre Junod included a selection of Tsonga song lyrics with English translations in his 1913 study, The Life of a South African Tribe.
For more recent studies of Tsonga music and songs, see the publications of Thomas Johnston in the 1970s, all of which include Tsonga song lyrics with English translations.
Junod also included a selection of Tsonga riddles with English translations in The Life of a South African Tribe. Here are two of those riddles:
Following up on Junod's work on Tsonga riddles, J.E. Kaemmer has documented Tsonga "tone riddles," specifically the titekatekani of the Tswa people.
Here are some of the Tsonga proverbs which Junod recorded in The Life of a South African Tribe:
Junod later published Quelques Proverbes Thonga, a booklet of Tsonga proverbs, in 1931.
Some additional Tsonga proverbs: