Chewa (also known as Nyanja, /ˈnjændʒə/) is a Bantu language spoken in Malawi and a recognised minority in Zambia and Mozambique.

Chewa belongs to the same language group (Guthrie Zone N) as Tumbuka, Sena[7] and Nsenga.

Throughout the history of Malawi, only Chewa and Tumbuka have at one time been the primary dominant national languages used by government officials and in school curricula.

As a result, Tumbuka was removed from the school curriculum, the national radio, and the print media.

[9]Chewa is the most widely known language of Malawi, spoken mostly in the Central and Southern Regions of that country.

[12] The Chewa were a branch of the Maravi people who lived in the Eastern Province of Zambia and in northern Mozambique as far south as the River Zambezi from the 16th century or earlier.

[13][14] The name "Chewa" (in the form Chévas) was first recorded by António Gamitto, who at the age of 26 in 1831 was appointed as second-in-command of an expedition from Tete to the court of King Kazembe in what became Zambia.

His route took him through the country of King Undi west of the Dzalanyama mountains, across a corner of present-day Malawi and on into Zambia.

According to Gamitto, the Malawi or Maravi people (Maraves) were those ruled by King Undi south of the Chambwe stream (not far south of the present border between Mozambique and Zambia), while the Chewa lived north of the Chambwe.

For example, the modern Chichewa phrase zaka ziwiri 'two years' was dzaka dziŵiri in Mateke's speech, whereas for Johannes Rebmann's informant Salimini, who came from the Lilongwe region, it was bzaka bziŵiri.

Rebmann was a missionary living near Mombasa in Kenya, and he obtained his information from a Malawian slave, known by the Swahili name Salimini, who had been captured in Malawi some ten years earlier.

[21] Another Bible translation, known as the Buku Lopatulika ndilo Mau a Mulungu, was made in a more standard Central Region dialect about 1900–1922 by missionaries of the Dutch Reformed Mission and Church of Scotland with the help of some Malawians.

This book, the first grammar of any African language to be written by an American, was a work of cooperation between a young black PhD student and young student from Nyasaland studying in Chicago, Hastings Kamuzu Banda, who in 1966 was to become the first President of the Republic of Malawi.

If the more complex syllable onsets are analyzed as single consonants, the inventory is as follows: The spelling used here is that introduced in 1973,[33] which is the one generally in use in the Malawi at the present time, replacing the Chinyanja Orthography Rules of 1931.

Despite this, such words can still be counted if appropriate: tomáto muwíri 'two tomatoes', mowa uwíri 'two beers', malayá amódzi 'one shirt', udzudzú umódzi 'one mosquito'.

The relative pronoun améne 'who' and demonstrative améneyo use the same prefixes as a verb: The use of an object infix is not obligatory in Chewa (for example, ndagula means 'I have bought (them)').

The same infix with verbs with the applicative suffix -ira represents the indirect object, e.g. ndamúlembera 'I have written to him'.

The demonstrative pronouns uja 'that one you know' and uno 'this one we are in' take the concords u- and a- in classes 1 and 2.

For semantic reasons, class 1 uno is rare: The same concords w- (derived from u-) and a-, combined with the vowel a, make the subject prefix of the perfect tense.

In the plural the two prefixes a-a- combine into a single vowel: The concords w- (derived from u-) and a- are also found in the word á 'of': The same concords are used in possessive adjectives -ánga 'my', -áko 'your', -áke 'his/her/its/their', -áthu 'our', -ánu 'your (plural or respectful singular), -áwo 'their'/'his/her' (respectful): -áwo 'their' is used only of people (-áke is used for things).

Wá + ku- usually shortens to wó-, except where the verb root is monosyllabic: The same w- and a- concords are found with the words -ína 'other' and -ení-éní 'real'.

So in the present tense the 3rd person subject-marker is a-: But in the perfect tense wa- (singular) contrasts with a- (plural or respectful): When the subject is a noun not in class 1, the appropriate class prefix is used even if referring to a person: An object-marker can also optionally be added to the verb; if one is added it goes immediately before the verb-stem.

[96] The following have written published stories, novels, or plays in the Chewa language: An urban variety of Nyanja, sometimes called Town Nyanja, is the lingua franca of the Zambian capital Lusaka and is widely spoken as a second language throughout Zambia.

Town Nyanja has no official status, and the presence of large numbers of loanwords and colloquial expressions has given rise to the misconception that it is an unstructured mixture of languages or a form of slang.

The fact that the standard Nyanja used in schools differs dramatically from the variety actually spoken in Lusaka has been identified as a barrier to the acquisition of literacy among Zambian children.

[103] In addition, the subject and object marker for "I" is ni- rather than ndi-, and that for "they" is βa- (spelled "ba-") rather than a-.