Chewa language

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Chewa, also called Chichewa or Nyanja, is a Bantu language spoken in southeast Africa. It is native to Malawi and is also used by communities in eastern Zambia and northern Mozambique (Niassa). About 7 million people spoke it as their first language around 2007. In Malawi, Chewa is the most widely spoken language and has long been used in schools and government alongside English. In 1968 the Malawi name was officially changed from Chinyanja to Chichewa. In Zambia, the language is often called Nyanja, and the Lusaka variety, Town Nyanja, has its own distinctive features.

Chewa is written mainly with the Latin alphabet, though there are local writing traditions such as the Mwangwego script. It belongs to the Nyasa group of Bantu languages and is related to Tumbuka, Sena, and Nsenga. The language has a rich history of study by missionaries and linguists, and it has several Bible translations and grammars from different periods.

Grammar at a glance
- Sounds: five short vowels (a, e, i, o, u) and some long vowels.
- Tone: Chewa is a tonal language; pitch helps show meaning and marks verb tense and sentence structure.
- Noun classes: nouns are grouped into classes, marked by prefixes, and adjectives, pronouns, and verbs agree with the noun through these prefixes.
- Verbs: every verb begins with a subject prefix that agrees with who is doing the action. There are many tenses and aspects, built with tense markers, infixes, and tones. Verbs can also take extensions that change meaning (for example, making something happen, reversing actions, or adding an indirect object).
- Negation: negative forms use special prefixes like sí-.
- Word order: typical subject–verb–object order, with adjectives following the noun.

Dialects and modern usage
- Town Nyanja is the everyday Lusaka variety in Zambia. It has many loanwords from English and other languages and differs in some concord patterns from Malawi’s standard Chichewa.
- The standard Chewa used in Malawi and schools differs from Town Nyanja, which can affect literacy when children move between these forms.

A quick note on history and culture
Chewa speakers are descended from the Maravi peoples. The language spread through Malawi, parts of Zambia, and Mozambique over centuries. Today, Chewa plays a central role in education, media, and literature in Malawi and remains an important regional language across its speakers.