Tsonga Radio Tsonga Radios

Tsonga Radios

Tsonga Radios app. The Tsonga or Xitsonga language is spoken in southern Africa by the Tsonga people, also known as the Shangaan.

Tsonga belongs to the Bantu branch of the Niger–Congo languages. The language of the Tsonga people is wrongly called Xichangana (or "Shangaan" by outsiders) because some of the people were under the leadership of Soshangana "Manukusa" (wrongly classified as Zulu but actually Ndwandwe(Nguni/Ngoni), thus Xichangana is a hybrid of Xitsonga and the language of the Ndwandwe(Nguni/Ngoni)). Tsonga has different variants, some of which are considered different languages by some linguists: e.g. Tsonga, Ndawu, Ronga and Tswa.

Tsonga is spoken by about 1,972,000 [2] people in South Africa's Limpopo province as well as Gauteng Province and Mpumalanga Province, as well as 1.5 million people in Mozambique, and 19,000 people in Swaziland. There are also 100,000 speakers in Zimbabwe.

In South Africa most of Vatsonga were concentrated in places like e.g. Nkowankowa, Giyani, Malamulele, N'wamitwa, Muhlava, Elim (Axipilongo, ka Jiwawa) in Limpopo and Bushbuckridge(ka Mpisana) and others in Mpumalanga. There are also large numbers in the Northwest, KwaZulu-Natal(Tembe) and Gauteng provinces. Basically they can be found anywhere in the old Transvaal.