Hi. I’m Tsitsi.
I teach chiShona.
I started Speak Shona because I wanted my nephews and nieces to speak chiShona. It grew into something bigger.
Sr. Bernard made me fall in love with chiShona.
In high school, I had a Shona teacher, Sr. Bernard – who made me fall in love with the language. The way she taught it, the way she brought it alive, the way she teased us twumbuyu and gave me much needed shame at how bad I was. Shona had fascinating novels, poetry, colourful imagery. It was something worth studying. Worth celebrating.
And I want to do that for someone else.
Growing up bilingual, I noticed how I could think deeper, more freely in English than I could in Shona. I figured out why when someone called me an anglophile — as an insult. Every English thing I gobbled up. why not Shona? So I started digging. Shona poetry. Novels. Tsumo. Dramas. Even started listening to Radio two, the Shona station for the first time. The way the language moves, breathes, bends and holds things English simply can’t. The more I found, the more I fell in love.
chiShona is vast and rich and full of feeling.
So I want to make Shona as popular as Korean, Japanese, Chinese — languages that have millions of learners worldwide because the world decided they were worth learning. Why not chiShona? I want people everywhere to fall in love with this language the way I did — because of the culture, the people, the warmth, the depth.
“And I want Shona kids and heritage learners to not lose their Shonaness — to not be mentally colonised into thinking their language is somehow less. It isn’t. It never was.”
Every language needs a home.
Most people can learn a language when the material exists. Apps, stories, songs, podcasts, videos — that’s how languages become learnable. chiShona deserves all of that.
Speak Shona is going to be that place. The apps, the stories, the audio, the songs, film, games, cartoons — maybe even movies. All of it. One giant chiShona universe. The Shonaverse 🌍
Say hello.
Questions, collabs, sponsorships, or just want to talk chiShona.
Join the
chiShona universe.
Start with the live cohort, or join the Shonaverse for free.
