Xitsonga (Tsonga) Alphabet

Xitsonga is written with the 26 Latin letters a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z, each in a capital and a small form, as in the symbol grid above. That is the list Unicode's CLDR locale data gives for the language, and none of the letters carries an accent, so a Xitsonga text can be typed on any English keyboard or phone. Letters such as q turn up mainly in names and borrowed words.

The letter that surprises newcomers is x: in Xitsonga it is the sh sound, so the name of the language is said roughly "shi-tsonga", and xewani, hello, begins with sh. The xi- at the front is the prefix that names a language, the same job ki- does in Kiswahili and isi- in isiZulu; the people are the Vatsonga.

Many sounds are written with two or three letters. hl is a breathy l blown past the sides of the tongue, as in Zulu; rh is an r with a puff of breath, heard in rirhandzu, love; ny is the ny of canyon; and tsh, tlh and sw each spell a single sound too, as in ntlhanu, five, and swilo, things. The five vowels a e i o u sound roughly as in Spanish. Xitsonga is a tonal language, but the standard spelling does not mark tone, so there is no accent to look for.

The apostrophe in n': n'wana, n'we

The only character beyond A–Z that Xitsonga needs is the apostrophe. Written after n, it tells you the n is said like the ng of English sing: n'wana, child, n'we, one, and the many surnames and praise names that begin with N'wa-. Without it, nw would be read as an ordinary n followed by w, so leaving it out changes how a word is read.

Any of three characters does the job, and all three are in the grid. Most people type the straight ' from the keyboard; phones and word processors often turn it into the curly ’ (U+2019, Alt+0146 on Windows, Option+Shift+] on a Mac); and Unicode's ʼ (U+02BC, the modifier letter apostrophe) is the form meant for an apostrophe that belongs to a word, which search and spell-checkers keep inside the word rather than treating as punctuation. Whichever you pick, use the same one throughout a document so that a search finds every n'wana.

Xitsonga greetings: Xewani, Avuxeni, Ndza khensa

Hello in Xitsonga is Xewani, and in the morning Avuxeni, good morning. The usual next question is U njhani?, how are you?, asked of one person, or Mi njhani? to several people or to an elder as a mark of respect.

Thank you is Ndza khensa, and you will also hear Inkomu, as in Inkomu swinene, thank you very much. I love you is Ndza ku rhandza, built on the same verb -rhandza, to love, as rirhandzu, love. When parting, the one who stays says Famba kahle, go well, and the one who leaves answers Sala kahle, stay well. Counting starts n'we, mbirhi, nharhu, mune, ntlhanu, one to five, with khume for ten. Every word here uses only plain letters and the apostrophe, so it pastes into any message.

Where the Tsonga language is spoken

Xitsonga is spoken by about 5.3 million people by Unicode's CLDR estimates, split almost evenly between South Africa 🇿🇦, about 2.7 million, and Mozambique 🇲🇿, about 2.6 million, with a small community of about 19,000 in Eswatini 🇸🇿. In South Africa it is one of the official languages, spoken mainly in Limpopo, around Giyani and the former Gazankulu homeland, in Mpumalanga near the Kruger National Park, and in Gauteng. In southern Mozambique it is usually called Changana or Xichangana, and it is the main language of Gaza province. Zimbabwe 🇿🇼 lists it among its official languages under the name Shangani, and Shangaan is another English name for the people and their speech.

Its closest relatives are Ronga, spoken around Maputo, and Tswa, spoken further north in Inhambane; together they form the Tswa–Ronga group of Bantu languages. Swiss missionaries working among the Tsonga in the late nineteenth century did much to set the language down in writing, and the missionary Henri-Alexandre Junod described Tsonga life at length in The Life of a South African Tribe.

Money is written with letters in every Tsonga-speaking country: the South African rand as R50, the Mozambican metical as MT, Eswatini's lilangeni as E, and Zimbabwe Gold as ZiG. None of them has a Unicode sign. Neighbouring languages have their own collections here, among them Zulu, Swati, Venda, Northern Sotho and Portuguese, as do the South Africa and Mozambique pages with their flags and emoji.

Xitsonga words in music, dance and food

The best-known Tsonga emblem is the xibelani, a thick, many-layered skirt that women set swinging with fast hip movements in the dance of the same name; posts about it usually carry 💃🥁. Bright cloth such as the nceka, worn knotted over one shoulder, belongs to the same festive dress, and Tsonga traditional attire is one of the things people search for most.

Tsonga music runs from church choirs and the Xitsonga Bible to the fast, electronic Shangaan electro that grew out of Limpopo, and Xitsonga songs are a big part of what people look up in the language. At the table, vuswa is the stiff maize porridge 🌽 served with almost everything, and masonja, mopane worms 🐛 gathered from mopane trees and dried, are a prized delicacy in Limpopo.