The Chewas constitute 90% of the population of the central region; the Nyanja tribe predominates in the south and the Tumbuka in the north.
At its greatest extent, the state included territory from the Tumbuka and Tonga areas to the north to the Lower Shire in the south, and west to Luangwa and Zambezi valleys.
The language of the Tumbuka people is called chiTumbuka — the chi- marker in front of Tumbuka means “thing”, “concept”, and is understood in this case “the language of (the Tumbuka people)”.
Senga is an erstwhile 'dialect' of Tumbuka that is actually a distinct language, more closely related to Bemba than to Tumbuka (Christine Ahmed 1995).
On July 16, 2007, Ambuya Mlambo, along with the Tumbuka Dance Company, opened the 50th anniversary of the National Gallery of Zimbabwe with a dance and act that focused on humility and tolerance.
In Malawi and Zambia, they speak a mixture of languages of the people they conquered such as Chewa, Nsenga and Tumbuka and their original language, Zulu.