The Shona languages (also called the Shonic group) are a clade of Bantu languages coded Zone S.10 in Guthrie's classification.
Classification According to Nurse & Philippson (2003), the languages form a valid node. They are:
Shona Eastern Shona group Ndau (S.15) Central Shona group Korekore (S.11) and Tawara Zezuru (S.12) Manyika (S.13) and Tewe Karanga (S.14) Western Shona group Kalanga (S.16) Nambya
Glottolog classiefies the Shona languages as follows:https://glottolog.org/resource/languoid/id/shon1250
Shona Core Shona Ndau Plateau Shona Central Shona Shona Tawara Manyika Tewe kalanga-Nambya Kalanga Nambya Dema (unclassified shona)
In the 1920s, the Rhodesian administration was faced with the challenge of preparing schoolbooks and other materials in the various languages and dialects and requested the recommendation of the South African linguist Clement Doke. Based on his 1931 report, Standard Shona was developed from the Central Shona varieties. Because of the presence of the capital city in the Zezuru region, that variety has come to dominate in Standard Shona.
Some classifications include the Shonic group in Southern Bantu, with the other Zone S languages; others treat it separately.
History The homeland of Proto-Shona was in an area between southern Zimbabwe and northern South Africa (Limpopo province). According to Christopher Ehret, Shona-speaking territory at some point in time extended northward to the Zambezi in Mozambique and possibly even beyond it in some places. The former presence of these now extinct Shona peoples, can be found in the large variety of Shona loanwords in the Nyasa languages (such as Chewa) which currently dominate the Lower Zambezi, and even in the Chuwabu language (a Makua language).
References
Doke, Clement M. Report on the Unification of the Shona Dialects. Government of Southern Rhodesia: Government Blue Book, 1931.