Сукума

Sukuma (Kisukuma) is the largest single Bantu language of Tanzania by L1 speakers, with ~5M speakers spoken predominantly in the Lake Victoria region — Mwanza, Shinyanga, Tabora, Geita and Simiyu regions. The Sukuma people are Tanzania's largest ethnic group, around 16% of the national population. The language has tone (high-low contrast on stems and tense-aspect markers) and Bantu noun-class agreement (~18 classes); it is closely related to Nyamwezi (nym), with which it forms a dialect continuum, classified together as Bantu Zone F21. Despite the large speaker community, Swahili (sw) dominates education, media, and government across Tanzania, and Sukuma has limited written tradition or media presence.