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Language Lineage

Nyasa

The Eastern Bantu languages of Guthrie's zone N around Lake Malawi, grouped on shared vocabulary in the Tervuren lexicostatistical survey and in Glottolog. Its core, Chewa-Nyanja, Sena and Nyungwe, is closely knit; whether Tumbuka and Malawi Tonga belong is less clear.

c. 1st millennium CE – presentAround Lake Malawi and down the Shire and lower Zambezi valleys: Malawi, eastern Zambia, central Mozambique (Tete, Sofala, Zambezia) and northern Zimbabwe
On this page
  1. The Lake Malawi Languages
  2. Chichewa and Its Neighbours
  3. Where it's spoken
  4. Turning points
  5. Contested classifications

01

The Lake Malawi Languages

The Nyasa languages take their name from Lake Nyasa, now Lake Malawi. The largest is Chichewa, called Chinyanja in Zambia and Mozambique, which is spoken across central and southern Malawi, in Zambia's Eastern Province and in parts of Mozambique and Zimbabwe. Sena and Nyungwe are spoken along the lower Zambezi and around Tete in Mozambique. Tumbuka in northern Malawi and eastern Zambia and Tonga on the western shore of the lake are usually counted in the group, though some scholars see Tumbuka as closer to its northern neighbours.

From around the 15th century the Maravi states, ruled by the Kalonga, Undi and Lundu, controlled the lands south and west of the lake and traded ivory and iron with the Portuguese on the Zambezi, who recorded them from the early 1600s. The name Malawi comes from Maravi.

In the 1830s and 1840s Nguni-speaking Ngoni war bands, driven north by the upheavals in South Africa, crossed the Zambezi and settled among the Chewa and Tumbuka. Within a few generations most of their descendants spoke Chewa or Tumbuka, and Ngoni survives mainly in songs and praise poetry.

02

Chichewa and Its Neighbours

Scottish missions shaped the written languages: Livingstonia (1875), where Tumbuka and Tonga were written, and Blantyre (1876), where Nyanja was written. A union Nyanja Bible, Buku Lopatulika, followed in 1922. In 1968 President Hastings Banda made Chichewa, as the language was renamed, the national language of Malawi. Tumbuka, the main language of the north, disappeared from radio and schools, and it returned only after multiparty politics came back in the 1990s. In Zambia, Nyanja is one of the seven regional official languages and the everyday language of Lusaka, and Zimbabwe's 2013 constitution lists Chewa among its official languages.

Chichewa is also one of the best-studied Bantu languages in modern linguistics. Its verbs agree with both subject and object through prefixes that match the noun classes: njuchi zi-na-lum-a alenje 'the bees stung the hunters', where zi- agrees with njuchi 'bees' (class 10). Adding the object marker -wa-, which refers to alenje 'hunters', gives njuchi zi-na-wa-lum-a alenje. Work by Joan Bresnan and Sam Mchombo on such sentences made Chichewa a standard test case for theories of agreement.

On the map

Where it’s spoken

Spoken todayShading marks whole countries, not the regions within them.
  1. Malawi
  2. Mozambique
  3. Zambia
  4. Zimbabwe

Figures are rough first-language estimates, rounded, from censuses and Ethnologue. Counts for small or scattered communities are especially uncertain.

Rings along the limb

Turning points

Oldest first.

  1. Splitc. late 1st millennium CEContested

    Around Lake Malawi

    Eastern Bantu speakers settled south and west of Lake Malawi and in the Shire and Zambezi valleys develop the Nyasa languages. The date, and whether the group descends from a southern Kusi branch, are debated.

    Sources (2)
    • Nurse, Derek & Gérard Philippson, eds. 2003. The Bantu Languages. London: Routledge.
    • Ehret, Christopher. 1998. An African Classical Age: Eastern and Southern Africa in World History, 1000 B.C. to A.D. 400. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia.
  2. Contact1835 – late 19th century

    The Ngoni settle

    Ngoni groups led by Zwangendaba cross the Zambezi in 1835 and later settle among the Chewa and Tumbuka. Their descendants largely shift to Chewa or Tumbuka, which take in some Nguni vocabulary, while Ngoni survives in songs and praise poetry.

    Sources (1)
    • Read, Margaret. 1956. The Ngoni of Nyasaland. London: Oxford University Press for the International African Institute.
  3. Writing1875 – 1922

    Mission literacy

    The Livingstonia (1875) and Blantyre (1876) missions write Nyanja, Tumbuka and Tonga in the Latin alphabet and open schools. A union Nyanja Bible appears in 1922.

    Sources (1)
    • Kayambazinthu, Edrinnie. 1998. The language planning situation in Malawi. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 19(5): 369–439.
  4. Revitalization1968 – 1994

    Tumbuka back on air

    In 1968 Hastings Banda makes Chichewa Malawi's national language, and Tumbuka is dropped from radio and schools. After the return of multiparty politics in 1993–94, Tumbuka and other Malawian languages return to national radio.

    Sources (1)
    • Kayambazinthu, Edrinnie. 1998. The language planning situation in Malawi. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 19(5): 369–439.

Outside the tree

Contested classifications

These disagreements may never be settled. Each position is given with its grounds, and no side is declared correct.

  • Minority position

    Nyasa belongs to Kusi, a southern branch of Eastern Bantu with Shona, Sotho-Tswana and Nguni

    Evidence for

    Christopher Ehret's Kusi group, based on shared vocabulary innovations, includes the Nyasa languages together with the languages further south, and the geography fits a single southward spread across the Zambezi.

    Evidence against

    Lexicostatistical and phylogenetic studies do not consistently recover a Kusi group, and Glottolog treats Tumbuka-Sena-Nyanja as a separate branch of Eastern Bantu. The group's own edges are unsettled: Tumbuka and Malawi Tonga differ from the Chewa-Sena core, and some scholars place Tumbuka closer to the languages north of the lake.

    Sources (3)