The Hehe are an ethnic and linguistic

Linguistics

Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....

 group based in Iringa Region

Iringa Region

Iringa is one of Tanzania's 26 administrative regions. The regional capital is Iringa. The total area is , of which land area is 56,864 km sq and water area is 2,070 km² ....

 in south-central Tanzania

Tanzania

The United Republic of Tanzania is a country in East Africa bordered by Kenya and Uganda to the north, Rwanda, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the west, and Zambia, Malawi, and Mozambique to the south. The country's eastern borders lie on the Indian Ocean.Tanzania is a state...

, speaking the Bantu Hehe language

Hehe language

Hehe is a Bantu language spoken by the Hehe people of the Iringa region of Tanzania. It was reported to have "Ngoni" features, that is, words of a Zulu-like language introduced when conquered by a Nguni or Zulu-like people in the early 19th century...

. In 1994, the Hehe population was estimated to number 750,000.
Their early history

History

History is the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events. History can also mean the period of time after writing was invented. Scholars who write about history are called historians...

 is vague and mostly lost. The people who were eventually to be called Hehe by Europe

Europe

Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

ans, lived in isolation on a highland in southwestern Tanzania, northeast of Lake Nyasa (Lake Malawi), and had few ancestors who had been in Uhehe for more than four generations.