World Language Map

Where is Tsonga spoken?

Tsonga (Xitsonga) is an Atlantic-Congo language, spoken in South Africa, Mozambique, Eswatini and Zimbabwe. The outlined area on the map shows where.

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The filter only changes what is drawn. Tap the map to list every language at a spot, whichever family is shown. You can also pick any family from its own page.

Key

Language families (largest ten)

  • Atlantic-Congo
  • Austronesian
  • Sino-Tibetan
  • Indo-European
  • Afro-Asiatic
  • Nuclear Trans New Guinea
  • Otomanguean
  • Austroasiatic
  • Tai-Kadai
  • Pama-Nyungan

Everything else

  • All other families Smaller families, isolates and unclassified languages.
  • Point A language with no area map. The dot sits at its Glottolog position, in its family colour.

How to read the map. Each colour is a language family: a group of languages that share a common ancestor. The ten largest families have their own colour and every other family is grey. Areas are see-through, so where two languages share a place the colours mix. Tap anywhere to list every language whose area covers that spot. Areas are generalisations drawn from published atlases, many of them decades old, and cities are multilingual, so an area never says that everyone there speaks the language. A dot marks a language that has no area map. The family name is always given in words, because colour alone is hard to tell apart for some people.

Where Tsonga is spoken

Tsonga is spoken in 4 countries: South Africa, Mozambique, Eswatini and Zimbabwe. The table gives the share of each country’s people who speak it, from Unicode CLDR, where CLDR has a figure.

CountryShare of populationEstimated speakers
South Africa4.4%2,659,474
Mozambique7.9%2,634,729
Eswatini1.7%19,348
ZimbabweNot givenNot given

Estimated speakers are the CLDR percentage applied to CLDR’s own population figure for the country, so they are rough. A country without a figure may still have speakers: it is listed because the language area, or Glottolog’s record, reaches it.

On the map, Tsonga is drawn as an area from Asher and Moseley 2007. The area was digitised by the Glottography project (doi:10.5281/zenodo.18613195), and the atlas is cited on the data sources page. Language areas are generalisations, and cities and borderlands are multilingual, so the outline does not mean that everyone inside it speaks Tsonga.

How many people speak Tsonga?

Wikidata gives about 13 million first-language speakers (Wikidata, with no source given, 2011). It also lists about 3.4 million second-language speakers (Wikidata, with no source given, 2002). These figures are approximate: they come from different sources, years and definitions of a speaker.

Status: Not endangered. Glottolog lists it as not endangered: it is still being passed on to children.

Where Tsonga sits in the language family tree

Glottolog classifies Tsonga as follows, from the largest family down to the language itself.

  1. Atlantic-Congo
  2. Volta-Congo
  3. Benue-Congo
  4. Bantoid
  5. Southern Bantoid
  6. Narrow Bantu
  7. East Bantu
  8. Southern Bantu
  9. Nuclear Southern Bantu
  10. Dimsuffix Southern Bantu
  11. Nguni-Tsonga-Copi
  12. Tsonga-Copi
  13. Tswa-Ronga (S.50)
  14. Tsongan
  15. Tsonga

Related languages

Other languages in the Tsongan group:

More about Tsonga

Codes: ISO 639-3 tso, Glottolog tson1249. Glottolog macroarea: Africa.

Questions about Tsonga

Where is Tsonga spoken?

Tsonga is spoken in South Africa, Mozambique, Eswatini and Zimbabwe. Unicode CLDR puts it at 4.4% of the population of South Africa, which is about 2,659,474 people. On the map it is shown as an area from Asher and Moseley 2007.

How many people speak Tsonga?

Wikidata gives about 13 million first-language speakers (Wikidata, with no source given, 2011). Speaker numbers are approximate and differ between sources: counting who is a speaker, and whether to include second-language speakers, is not settled. It also lists about 3.4 million second-language speakers (Wikidata, with no source given, 2002).

Which language family is Tsonga in?

Glottolog places Tsonga in the Atlantic-Congo family, in the branch Volta-Congo, Benue-Congo, Bantoid, Southern Bantoid, Narrow Bantu, East Bantu, Southern Bantu, Nuclear Southern Bantu, Dimsuffix Southern Bantu, Nguni-Tsonga-Copi, Tsonga-Copi, Tswa-Ronga (S.50) and Tsongan.

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