| Ronga | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spoken in | Mozambique South Africa |
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| Region | South of Maputo | |||
| Native speakers | 722,000 (date missing) | |||
| Language family | ||||
| Language codes | ||||
| ISO 639-3 | rng | |||
| Linguasphere | 99-AUT-dd incl. varieties 99-AUT-dda to 99-AUT-dde |
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Ronga (XiRonga; sometimes ShiRonga or GiRonga) is a South-Eastern Bantu language in the Tswa–Ronga family spoken just South of Maputo in Mozambique. It extends a little into South Africa. It has about 650,000 speakers in Mozambique and a further 90,000 in South Africa, with dialects including Konde, Putru and Kalanga.
The French philologist Junod seems to have been the first linguist to have studied it in the late 19th century.
Its alphabet is based on that of Tsonga as provided by Methodist missionaries and Portuguese settlers.
| Letter: | A | B | C | D | E | G | H | [I | J | K | L | M | N | Ṅ | O | P | R | S | Ŝ | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z | Ẑ |
| Value: | a | b~β | tʃ | d | e~ɛ | ɡ | h | i | dʒ | k | l | m | n | ŋ | ɔ~o | p | r | s | ʂ | t | u | v | w | ʃ | j | z | ʐ |
Ronga is grammatically so close to Tsonga in many ways that census officials often consider it a dialect; its noun class system is very similar and its verbal forms are almost identical. Its most immediately noticeable difference is a much greater influence from Portuguese, due to being centred near the capital Maputo (formerly Lourenço Marques).
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