Shona is a Bantu language that is part of the Niger-Congo family. It evolved over centuries in primarily in Zimbabwe. According to the eLinguistics.net analysis using specific software modules to assess linguistic relationships, the five languages most similar to Shona are Bemba, Chichewa, Tumbuka, Nyakyusa, and Swahili.
- Bemba (57.3)
Another language primarily spoken in Zimbabwe is Bemba, although it is also natively spoken in parts of the Democratic Republic of Congo as well. As a result of their close proximity, their vocabulary has a lot in common. For example, the Bemba word for “person” is “umuntu,” while in Shona it is “munhu.” - Chichewa (54.6)
Chichewa is widely spoken in Malawi, as well as Zambia and Mozambique. It is another Bantu language with a rich noun class system and very similar verb conjugation patterns to Shona. For example, the verb “to go” in Chichewa is “kupita,” which resembles the Shona “kuenda.” - Tumbuka (51.2)
Tumbuka is another Bantu language spoken in Malawi and Zambia. It shares many grammatical features with Shona, including the use of noun classes and agglutinative verb forms. Both languages use similar pronouns and have comparable sentence structures. The word for “child” (mwana) is the same in both languages. - Nyakyusa (50.0)
Natively spoken in Tanzania and Malawi, Nyakyusa, like Shona, belongs to the Bantu language branch. It features a similar noun class system, verb morphology, and vocabulary. Both languages use prefixes and suffixes extensively to indicate grammatical relationships. They have similar phonetic inventories. - Swahili (49.6)
Swahili is one of the most widely spoken Bantu languages in Africa. It serves as a lingua franca in East Africa and has influenced many other Bantu languages, including Shona. Swahili shares many grammatical and lexical features with Shona, though it has also been influenced by Arabic and other languages due to historical trade routes.
(to be considered for the list, the language must be spoken by at least one million people)