Chichewa

About Chichewa

Chichewa, also called Chewa or Nyanja, is a national language of Malawi, where most people speak it, and it is widely spoken in Zambia, Mozambique and Zimbabwe. It had about 12 million speakers in a 2007 count. It is a Bantu language and is also an official language of Zimbabwe.

Chichewa is tonal and written in Latin letters, and it is read much as it is written. Respect is shown with plural forms: muli bwanji? (how are you?) is the polite way to greet an older person, and uli bwanji? is used with a friend.

FamilyNiger-Congo, Bantu
Speakersabout 12 million (2007)
Official inZimbabwe (national language of Malawi)
ScriptLatin alphabet
Codesny (ISO 639-1), nya (ISO 639-3)

Speaker number: Nationalencyklopedin (2007), via Wikidata. Retrieved 26 September 2026.

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