Learn Xitsonga Through Topics You Actually Care About

LingoBear creates short Xitsonga passages on topics you choose. Tap any word for an instant English translation and build your vocabulary as you read. Bantu language, one of South Africa's 12 official languages and a national language of Mozambique, Latin script, ~12M speakers across southern Africa.

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Every word in your Xitsonga reading passage is clickable. Get English translations and grammar help — useful for parsing the noun-class agreement system.

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Type any topic and LingoBear generates a fresh Xitsonga reading passage — from xibelani dance to Limpopo travel.

What is Tsonga and where is it spoken?

Tsonga (Xitsonga) is a Bantu language spoken by around 12 million people across South Africa, Mozambique (where it is called Changana), Zimbabwe and Swaziland. It is one of South Africa's 12 official languages, with the largest concentration of speakers in Limpopo and Mpumalanga. Xichangana (Mozambique) and Xironga (around Maputo) are sometimes treated as separate languages, sometimes as Tsonga varieties.

What grammar features does Xitsonga have?

Xitsonga uses around 18 noun classes whose prefixes drive agreement across the sentence; the language prefix itself, xi-, marks the language as a class 7 noun. Verbs are agglutinative with subject and object markers, tense and aspect, plus extensions like -is- (causative), -el- (applicative) and -an- (reciprocal). Tone is contrastive but usually unmarked in writing. LingoBear lets you see these in real text.