Tumbuka is a Bantu language which is spoken in Malawi, Zambia, and Tanzania. It is also known as Chitumbuka or Citumbuka — the chi- prefix in front of Tumbuka means "in the manner of", and is understood in this case to mean "the language of the Tumbuka people". Tumbuka belongs to the same language group (Guthrie Zone N) Chewa and Sena. Tumbuka-Senga or simply Senga, though customarily considered a separate language, is close enough to be a dialect of Tumbuka. The World Almanac in 1998 estimated that there were approximately two million Tumbuka speakers, though other sources estimated a much smaller number while others estimated a higher number. The majority of Tumbuka speakers are said to live in Malawi. Tumbuka is the most widely spoken of the languages of Northern Malawi in the Rumphi, Mzuzu, Mzimba, Chitipa, Nkhata-Bay and Karonga districts. In Zambia, Tumbuka is primarily spoken in the Lundazi, Chasefu and Lumezi districts. Its dialect (Senga) is spoken in Chama district and surrunding areas. There are substantial differences between the form of Tumbuka spoken in urban areas of Malawi (which borrows some words from Swahili and Chewa) and the "village" or "deep" Tumbuka spoken in villages. The Rumphi variant is often regarded as the most "linguistically pure", and is sometimes called "real Tumbuka". The Mzimba dialect has been strongly influenced by Zulu (chiNgoni), even so far as to have clicks in words like chitha "urinate", which do not occur in other dialects. Throughout the history of Malawi, only Tumbuka and Chewa (Nyanja) have at one time or another been the primary dominant language used by government officials. However, the Tumbuka language suffered a lot during the rule of President Hastings Kamuzu Banda, since in 1968 as a result of his one-nation, one-language policy it lost its status as an official language in Malawi. As a result, Tumbuka was removed from the school curriculum, the national radio, and the print media. With the advent of multi-party democracy in 1994, Tumbuka programmes were started again on the radio, but the number of books and other publications in Tumbuka remains low.

Orthography

Two systems of writing Tumbuka are in use: the traditional spelling (used for example in the Chitumbuka version of Wikipedia and in the newspaper Fuko), in which words such as banthu 'people' and chaka 'year' are written with 'b' and 'ch', and the new official spelling (used for example in the Citumbuka dictionary published online by the Centre for Language Studies and in the online Bible), in which the same words are written with 'ŵ' and 'c', e.g. ŵanthu and caka. (The sound 'ŵ' is a closely rounded [w] pronounced with the tongue in the close-i position.) There is some uncertainty over where to write 'r' and where 'l', e.g. cakulya (Dictionary) or cakurya (Bible) 'food'. (In fact [l] and [r] are allophones of the same phoneme.) There is also hesitation between the spellings 'sk' and 'sy' (both miskombe and misyombe ('bamboo') are found in the Citumbuka dictionary).

Phonology

Vowels

The same vowels, , , , and syllabic are found in Tumbuka as in the neighbouring language Chewa.

Consonants

Tumbuka consonants are also similar to those of the neighbouring Chewa, but with certain differences. The continuant sounds, and , which are absent or marginal in Chewa, are common in Tumbuka. Also common are the palatalised sounds, , , , , , and. In Tumbuka there are no affricates such as Chichewa, , ,. The sounds and are never nasalised in Tumbuka, so that Chewa nsómba ('fish') = Tumbuka somba. The sound is found only in foreign words such as shati ('shirt') and shuga ('sugar'). Tumbuka sometimes corresponds to Chewa, for example Chewa kudwala 'to be ill' = Tumbuka kulwala, Chewa kudya 'to eat' = Tumbuka kulya. The pronunciation of "sk" and "zg" varies according to dialect. Tumbuka consonants are frequently either palatalised (i.e. followed by /y/) or rounded (i.e. followed by /w/.) Some of them can also be preceded by a homorganic nasal (/n/, /ng'/ or /m/). The possible consonant combinations are shown in the table below:

Tone

One of the main differences between Chewa and Tumbuka is that Chewa is a tonal language, whereas in Tumbuka there are no distinctions of tone between one word and another. Tumbuka has a tonal accent but in a very limited way, in that every word, spoken in isolation, has the same falling tone on the penultimate syllable (which also coincides with stress). It is therefore not possible in Tumbuka to contrast two different words or two different tenses tonally, as it is in Chichewa and other Bantu languages. However, this penultimate falling tone occurs not on every word, but only on the last word of a phonological phrase; e.g. in the following sentence, only the second word has a tone, the first being toneless: A greater variety of tonal patterns is found in the ideophones (expressive words) of Tumbuka; for example Low (yoyoyo 'disintegrating into small pieces'), High (fyá: 'swooping low (of birds)'), High-Low (phúli 'sound of thing bursting'), and Low-High (yií 'sudden disappearance'), etc. Intonational tones are also used in Tumbuka; for example, in yes-no questions there is often a High-Low fall on the final syllable of the question: There does not seem to be any consistent, direct correlation between tone in Tumbuka and focus.

Nouns

Noun classes

As is usual with Bantu languages, Tumbuka nouns are grouped into different noun classes according to their singular and plural prefixes. Each class of noun has its own adjective, pronoun, and verb agreements, known as 'concords'. Where the agreements disagree with the prefix, the agreements take precedence in deciding the class of noun. For example, the noun katundu 'possessions', despite having the prefix ka-, is placed in class 1, since one says katundu uyu 'these possessions' using the class 1 demonstrative uyu. Malawians themselves (e.g. in the University of Malawi's Citumbuka dictionary) refer to the noun classes by traditional names such as "Mu-Ŵa-"; Bantu specialists, however, refer to the classes by numbers (1/2 etc.) corresponding to the noun-classes of other Bantu languages. Occasionally nouns do not correspond to the classes below, e.g. fumu 'chief' (class 9) irregularly has a plural mafumu in class 6. Class 1/2 (Mu-Ŵa-) Some nouns in this class lack the prefix Mu-: Class 3/4 (Mu-Mi-) Class 5/6 (Li-Ma-) Class 7/8 (Ci-Vi-) Class 9/10 (Yi-Zi-) Class 11 (Lu-) Some speakers treat words in this class as if they were in class 5/6. Class 12/13 (Ka-Tu-) Class 14/6 (U-Ma-) These nouns are frequently abstract and have no plural. Class 15 (Ku-) Infinitive Classes 16, 17, 18 (Pa-, Ku-, Mu-) Locative

Concords

Verbs, adjectives, numbers, possessives, and pronouns in Tumbuka have to agree with the noun referred to. This is done by means of prefixes, infixes, or suffixes called 'concords' which differ according to the class of noun. Class 1 has the greatest variety of concords, differing for pronouns, subject prefix, object infix, numbers, adjectives, and possessives: Other noun classes have a smaller variety of concords, as can be seen from the table below:

Sample phrases and text

The following is a list of phrases that can be used when one visits a region whose primary language is Tumbuka:

Verbs

Subject prefix

All verbs must have a subject prefix, which agrees with the subject noun. For example, the word ciŵinda 'hunter' is class 7, so if it is subject, the verb has the prefix ci-: It is also possible for the subject to be a locative noun (classes 16, 17, 18), in which case the verb has a locative prefix: The locative prefix ku- (class 17) is also used impersonally when discussing the weather: When the subject is a personal pronoun, the subject prefixes are as follows (the pronoun itself may be omitted, but not the subject prefix): In the perfect tense, these are shortened to n-a-, w-a-, w-a-, t-a-, mw-a-, ŵ-a-, e.g. t-a-gula 'we have bought'. In Karonga dialect, in the 3rd person singular a- is found instead of wa-, and the 3rd plural is wa- instead of ŵa-, except in the perfect tense, when wa- and ŵa- are used.

Object-marker

To indicate the object, an infix can be added to the verb immediately before the verb root. Generally speaking, the object-marker is optional: The object-marker agrees with the class of the object, as shown on the table of concords above. The object-marker can also be a locative (classes 16, 17, or 18): The locative markers for personal pronouns are as follows:

Tenses

Tenses in Tumbuka are made partly by adding infixes, and partly by suffixes. Unlike Chichewa, tones do not form any part of the distinction between one tense and another. In the past a distinction is made between hodiernal tenses (referring to events of today) and remote tenses (referring to events of yesterday or some time ago). However, the boundary between recent and remote is not exact. Another distinction is made between past and perfect tenses. When a perfect tense is used it carries an implication that the resulting situation still exists at the time of speaking, for example: 'the pumpkins have spread (zathambalala) over the garden'. The present perfect can also be used in verbs expressing a current situation such as ndakhala 'I am sitting' or ndakondwa 'I am pleased'. The remote perfect is used for events which happened some time ago but of which the effects still apply today, such as libwe lilikuwa 'the rock has fallen' or walikutayika 'he (has) died'. The future tenses similarly distinguish near from remote events. Some tenses imply that the event will take place elsewhere, for example ndamukuchezga 'I will go and visit'. Compound tenses are also found in Tumbuka, such as wati wagona 'he had slept', wakaŵa kuti wafumapo 'he had just left' and wazamukuŵa waguliska 'he will have sold'. Other future tenses are given by Vail (1972) and others. In the 1st person singular, ni-ku- and ni-ka- are shortened to nkhu- and nkha-: nkhuluta 'I am going', 'I go', nkhalutanga 'I used to go'.

Negative verbs

To make the negative of a verb in Tumbuka, the word yayi or cha(ra) is added at or near the end of the clause. It seems that yayi is preferred by younger speakers: With the present perfect tense, however, a separate form exists, adding -nda- and ending in -e:

The Ngoni influence on Tumbuka

Words of Ngoni (Zulu/Ndwandwe) origin found in Tumbuka: All Tumbuka dialects have to some extent been affected by the Ngoni language, most especially in Mzimba District of Malawi. Ngoni is a language that originates from the Ndwandwe people who were neighbours to the Zulu clan prior to being conquered by the Zulu and being assimilated into the Zulu identity. The language the Ndwandwe spoke was thus nearly identical Zulu. Below are some examples of words found in chitumbuka that are of Zulu/Ndwandwe origin, though most of them have original Tumbuka counterpart words that can be used interchangeably at the speakers will, (excluding 'munwe/minwe' meaning 'finger/fingers' for example, that seemingly did not have an original counterpart or the original word has been lost). The word njowi is used for finger/s.

An example of Tumbuka

Months in Tumbuka: An example of a folktale translated into Tumbuka and other languages of Northern Malawi is given in the Language Mapping Survey for Northern Malawi carried out by the Centre for Language Studies of the University of Malawi. The Tumbuka version of the folktale goes as follows:

Some vocabulary

Helpful phrases

Greetings

People

The plural ba- (ŵa-) is often used for politeness when referring to elders:

Verbs

Animals

Notable Tumbuka People