Tongwe (''Sitongwe'') and Bende (''Sibende'') constitute a clade of
Bantu language
The Bantu languages (English: , Proto-Bantu: *bantʊ̀) are a large family of languages spoken by the Bantu people of Central, Southern, Eastern africa and Southeast Africa. They form the largest branch of the Southern Bantoid languages.
The t ...
s coded Zone F.10 in Guthrie's classification. According to Nurse & Philippson (2003),
they form a valid node. Indeed, at 90% lexical similarity they may be dialects of a single language.
References
Bantu languages
{{Bantu-lang-stub