Tsonga

About Tsonga

Tsonga, Xitsonga, is spoken by about 4 million people in northeastern South Africa, southern Mozambique and parts of Zimbabwe and Eswatini. It is one of the official languages of South Africa and is used mainly in Limpopo and Mpumalanga provinces.

Tsonga is a Bantu language written in the Latin alphabet. The x in Xitsonga is read like sh, and avuxeni is the everyday greeting for good morning.

FamilyNiger-Congo, Bantu
Speakersabout 4 million (2015)
Official inSouth Africa, Zimbabwe
ScriptLatin alphabet
Codests (ISO 639-1), tso (ISO 639-3)

Speaker number: Ethnologue (2015), via Wikidata. Retrieved 26 September 2026.

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