Chichewa is a Bantu language that is part of the Niger-Congo family. It evolved over centuries in primarily in Malawi, but also Zambia and Mozambique. According to the eLinguistics.net analysis using specific software modules to assess linguistic relationships, the five languages most similar to Chichewa are Tumbuka, Swahili, Shona, Nyakyusa, and Luganda.
- Tumbuka (64.0)
Tumbuka is one of the most closely related languages to Chichewa. It is spoken primarily in northern Malawi and parts of eastern Zambia. Both languages share many similarities in vocabulary, grammar, and sentence structure. Due to historical interactions and geographical proximity, speakers of Chichewa and Tumbuka can often understand each other with relative ease. - Swahili (57.3)
Swahili is more widely spoken across East Africa, so it shares a significant number of linguistic elements with Chichewa. However, Swahili has been heavily influenced by Arabic due to historical trade along the East African coast, making its lexicon somewhat different from Chichewa. - Shona (54.6)
Shona, the predominant language in Zimbabwe, is another language closely related to Chichewa. Both languages have overlapping grammatical structures and vocabulary. Many words in Shona sound similar to their Chichewa counterparts. Speakers of Chichewa can often pick up and understand elements of Shona with relative ease. - Nyakyusa (53.5)
Natively spoken in Tanzania and Malawi, Nyakyusa belongs to the Bantu language branch. It features a similar noun class system, verb morphology, and vocabulary to Chichewa. Both languages use prefixes and suffixes extensively to indicate grammatical relationships. They also have similar phonetic inventories. - Luganda (51.1)
Spoken primarily in Uganda, Luganda is also closely related to Chichewa. While Luganda has some unique phonetic characteristics, its grammar and core vocabulary remain similar to Chichewa. It is relatively easy for speakers of either language to recognize familiar elements in the other.
(to be considered for the list, the language must be spoken by at least one million people)