The Tonga (also called Nyasa Tonga) are an

ethnic group An ethnicity or ethnic group is a group of people with shared attributes, which they collectively believe to have, and long-term endogamy. Ethnicities share attributes like language, culture, common sets of ancestry, traditions, society, re ...

living in northern

Malawi Malawi, officially the Republic of Malawi, is a landlocked country in Southeastern Africa. It is bordered by Zambia to the west, Tanzania to the north and northeast, and Mozambique to the east, south, and southwest. Malawi spans over and ...

in Nkhata Bay District who are part of the Tumbuka group of peoples. The Nyasa Tongas speak a dialect of Chitumbuka called Chitonga. Their language dialect and Tonga people of Zambia and Zimbabwe belong to different branches of the Bantu family and are not related.

History

The Tonga people came from the

Tumbuka people The Tumbuka (also known as Yombe, Kamanga, Senga, Tonga and Henga) are a group of Bantu peoples, Bantu peoples found in Malawi, Zambia, Tanzania and Zimbabwe.Nkhamanga Kingdom declined in the early 17th century. When the Ngoni from South Africa who had fled from the Zulu warrior raided the western Nkhamanga Kingdom, the kingdom split into two with one group being currently called Tonga and the other Tumbuka. In reality, the two groups are part of one family and

Glottolog ''Glottolog'' is an open-access online bibliographic database of the world's languages. In addition to listing linguistic materials ( grammars, articles, dictionaries) describing individual languages, the database also contains the most up-to-d ...

categorizes Tonga language and Tumbuka language in a single language family.

Language

According to the 2018 census, there were nearly 170,000 speakers of the Malawi Tonga language which is a dialect of Tumbuka language. During colonial time, the Tonga learnt Chitumbuka in school as it was one of the official languages of Malawi.

References

*Bauer, Andreus. "Raising the Flag of War". *Davidson, Basil. "African Kingdoms". *Tew, Mary. "People of the Lake Nyasa Region". {{authority control Bantu peoples Ethnic groups in Malawi