Xhosa language

Xhosa
isiXhosa
Native to	South Africa, Lesotho
Region	Eastern Cape, Western Cape, KwaZulu-Natal, Northern Cape, Free State
Ethnicity	Xhosa people
Native speakers	8.2 million (2011 census) 11 million L2 speakers (2002)
Language family	Niger–Congo Atlantic–Congo Benue–Congo Southern Bantoid Bantu Southern Bantu Nguni Zunda Xhosa
Writing system	Latin (Xhosa alphabet) Xhosa Braille
Signed forms	Signed Xhosa
Official status
Official language in	South Africa Zimbabwe
Language codes
ISO 639-1	xh
ISO 639-2	xho
ISO 639-3	xho
Glottolog	xhos1239
Guthrie code	S.41
Linguasphere	99-AUT-fa incl. varieties 99-AUT-faa to 99-AUT-faj + 99-AUT-fb (isiHlubi)
Proportion of the South African population that speaks Xhosa at home   0–20%   20–40%   40–60%   60–80%   80–100%

The Xhosa language
Person	umXhosa
People	amaXhosa
Language	isiXhosa
Country	kwaXhosa

Xhosa (English: /ˈkɔːsə/ or /ˈkoʊsə/; Xhosa: isiXhosa [isikǁʰɔ́ːsa]) is a Nguni Bantu language with click consonants ("Xhosa" begins with a click) and one of the official languages of South Africa. Although not widely spoken there, it is also an official language of Zimbabwe. "Xhosa is spoken as a first language by 8.2 million people and by 11 million as a second language in South Africa, mostly in Eastern Cape Province. Total number of users in all countries is 19.2 million (Ethnologue)".  Like most other Bantu languages, Xhosa is a tonal language; the same sequence of consonants and vowels can have different meanings, depending on intonation. Xhosa has two tones: high and low.

Xhosa is written with the Latin alphabet. Three letters are used to indicate the basic clicks: c for dental clicks, x for lateral clicks and q for post-alveolar clicks (for a more detailed explanation, see the table of consonant phonemes below). Tones are not normally indicated in writing.

Classification

Xhosa is part of the branch of Nguni languages, known as Zunda languages, which also include Zulu, Southern Ndebele and Northern Ndebele. Zunda languages effectively form a dialect continuum of variously mutually intelligible varieties. Xhosa is also mutually intelligible with other Nguni languages to a lesser extent.

Nguni languages are, in turn, part of the much larger group of Bantu languages.

Geographical distribution

Geographical distribution of the Xhosa in South Africa: density of Xhosa home-language speakers.

  < 1 /km²

  1–3 /km²

  3–10 /km²

  10–30 /km²

  30–100 /km²

  100–300 /km²

  300–1000 /km²

  1000–3000 /km²

  > 3000 /km²

Trilingual government building sign in Afrikaans, English and Xhosa

Sign outside the AmaZink township theatre restaurant in Kayamandi welcoming visitors in Xhosa

Xhosa is the most widely distributed African language in South Africa, though the most widely spoken African language is Zulu. It is the second most common home language in South Africa as a whole. As of 2003 approximately 5.3 million Xhosa-speakers, the majority, live in the Eastern Cape, followed by the Western Cape (approximately 2 million), Gauteng (671,045), the Free State (246,192), KwaZulu-Natal (219,826), North West (214,461), Mpumalanga (46,553), the Northern Cape (51,228), and Limpopo (14,225). A minority of Xhosa speakers (18,000) live in Quthing District, Lesotho.

Dialects

Xhosa has several dialects. Maho (2009) lists Mpondo (Pondo), Xesibe, Bomvana, Gaika (Ngqika), Gcaleka, Thembu, Mpondomise, Ndlambe, and Hlubi..

Hlubi is the dialect in the former Ciskei; there is the more distinct Hlubi language further north, where Xhosa meets SeSotho.

Phonology

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Spoken Xhosa

Vowels

Xhosa has an inventory of ten vowels: [a], [ɛ~e], [i], [ɔ~o] and [u] written as a, e, i, u and o in order, all occurring in both long and short.

Xhosa vowel phonemes

	Front		Back
	short	long	short	long
Close	i (i)	iː (ii)	u (o)	uː (oo)
Mid	ɛ (e)	eː (ee)	ɔ (u)	oː (uu)
Open			a (a)	aː (aa)

Tones

Xhosa is a tonal language with two inherent, phonemic tones: low and high. Tones are rarely marked in the written language, but they can be indicated a [à], á [á], â [áà], ä [àá]. Long vowels are phonemic but are usually not written except for â and ä, which are the results of gemination of two vowels, both with different tones; they have thus become long vowels with contour tones (â high-low = falling, ä low-high = rising).

Consonants

Xhosa is rich in uncommon consonants. Besides pulmonic egressive sounds, which are found in all spoken languages, it has 18 clicks (in comparison, Juǀ'hoan, spoken by roughly 10,000 people in Botswana and Namibia, has 48 clicks, and Taa, with roughly 4,000 speakers in Botswana, has 83 click sounds, the largest consonant inventory of any known language). Also, Xhosa has ejectives and an implosive. Although 15 of the clicks also occur in Zulu, they are used less frequently than in Xhosa.

The first six are dental clicks (represented by the letter "c"), made with the tongue on the back of the teeth, and they are similar to the sound represented in English by "tut-tut" or "tsk-tsk" to reprimand someone. The next six are lateral (represented by the letter "x"), made by the tongue at the sides of the mouth, and they are similar to the sound used to call horses. The last six are alveolar (represented by the letter "q"), made with the tip of the tongue at the roof of the mouth, and they sound somewhat like a cork pulled from a bottle.

The following table lists the consonant phonemes of the language, with the pronunciation in IPA on the left and the orthography on the right:

		Labial	Dental/Alveolar		Postalveolar	Velar	Glottal
			central	lateral
Click	tenuis/ejective		[kǀʼ] c	[kǁʼ] x	[kǃʼ] q
	aspirated		[kǀʰ] ch	[kǁʰ] xh	[kǃʰ] qh
	slack voice		[ɡ̊ǀʱ] gc	[ɡ̊ǁʱ] gx	[ɡ̊ǃʱ] gq
	nasal		[ŋǀ] nc	[ŋǁ] nx	[ŋǃ] nq
	slack-voice nasal		[ŋǀʱ] ngc	[ŋǁʱ] ngx	[ŋǃʱ] ngq
	glottalised nasal		[ŋǀˀ] nkc	[ŋǁˀ] nkx	[ŋǃˀ] nkq
Plosive	tenuis/ejective	[pʼ] p	[tʼ] t		[t̠ʲʼ] ty	[kʼ] k
	aspirated	[pʰ] ph	[tʰ] th		[t̠ʲʰ] tyh	[kʰ] kh
	slack voice	[b̥ʱ] bh	[d̥ʱ] d		[d̠̥ʲʱ] dy	[ɡ̊ʱ] g
	implosive	[ɓ] b
Affricate	ejective		[tsʼ] ts		[t̠ʃʼ] tsh	[kxʼ] kr
	aspirated		[tsʰ] ths		[t̠ʃʰ] thsh
	slack voice		[d̥zʱ] dz 3		[d̠̥ʒʱ] j
Fricative	voiceless	[f] f	[s] s	[ɬ] hl	[ʃ] sh	[x] rh	[h] h
	slack voice	[v̤] v	[z̤] z	[ɮ̈] dl	[ʒ̈] zh 2	[ɣ̈] gr	[ɦ] hh
Nasal	fully voiced	[m] m	[n] n		[n̠ʲ] ny	[ŋ] ng’
	slack voice	[m̤] mh	[n̤] nh		[n̤ʲ] nyh	[ŋ̈] ngh 4
Approximant	fully voiced			[l] l	[j] y	[w] w
	slack voice			[l̤] lh	[j̈] yh	[w̤] wh
Trill	fully voiced		[r] r 1
	breathy voiced		[r̤] r 1

1. Two additional consonants, [r] and [r̤], are found in borrowings. Both are spelled r.
2. Two additional consonants, [ʒ] and [ʒ̈], are found in borrowings. Both are spelled zh.
3. Two additional consonants, [dz] and [dz̤], are found in loans. Both are spelled dz.
4. An additional consonant, [ŋ̈] is found in loans. It is spelled ngh.

In addition to the ejective affricate [tʃʼ], the spelling tsh may also be used for either of the aspirated affricates [tsʰ] and [tʃʰ].

The breathy voiced glottal fricative [ɦ] is sometimes spelled h.

The ejectives tend to be elective only in careful pronunciation or in salient positions and, even then, only for some speakers. Otherwise, they tend to be tenuis (plain) stops. Similarly, the tenuis (plain) clicks are often glottalised, with a long voice onset time, but that is uncommon.

The murmured clicks, plosives and affricates are only partially voiced, with the following vowel murmured for some speakers. That is, da may be pronounced [dʱa̤] (or, equivalently, [d̥a̤]). They are better described as slack voiced than as breathy voiced. They are truly voiced only after nasals, but the oral occlusion is then very short in stops, and it usually does not occur at all in clicks. Therefore, the absolute duration of voicing is the same as in tenuis stops. (They may also be voiced between vowels in some speaking styles.) The more notable characteristic is their depressor effect on the tone of the syllable.

Consonant changes with prenasalisation

Main article: Fortition

When consonants are prenasalised, their pronunciation and spelling may change. The murmur no longer shifts to the following vowel. Fricatives become africated and, if voiceless, they become ejectives as well, at least with some speakers: mf is pronounced [ɱp̪fʼ], ndl is pronounced [ndɮ], n+hl becomes ntl [ntɬʼ], n+z becomes ndz [ndz], etc. The orthographic b in mb is the voiced plosive [mb].

When voiceless clicks (c, x, q) are prenasalised, the silent letter k is added (kc, nkx, nkq) to prevent confusion with the nasal clicks nc, nx, nq.

Morphology

In keeping with many other Southern Bantu languages, Xhosa is an agglutinative language, with an array of prefixes and suffixes that are attached to root words. Like in other Bantu languages, nouns in Xhosa are classified into morphological classes, or genders (15 in Xhosa), with different prefixes for both singular and plural. Various parts of speech that qualify a noun must agree with the noun according to its gender. Agreements usually reflect part of the original class with which the word agrees. The word order is subject–verb–object, like in English.

The verb is modified by affixes to mark subject, object, tense, aspect and mood. The various parts of the sentence must agree in both class and number.

Examples

ukudlala – to play

ukubona – to see

umntwana – a child

abantwana – children

umntwana uyadlala – the child is playing

abantwana bayadlala – the children are playing

indoda – a man

amadoda – men

indoda iyambona umntwana – the man sees the child

amadoda ayababona abantwana – the men see the children

History

Henry Hare Dugmore, an Englishman who became fluent in Xhosa, jointly produced the first translation of the Bible into the language in 1859

Nelson Mandela was a famous Xhosa man.

Xhosa-speaking people have inhabited coastal regions of southeastern Africa since before the 16th century. They refer to themselves as the amaXhosa and their language as Xhosa. AmaXhosa migrated to the east coast of Africa and came across Khoisan-speaking people which "as a result of this contact, the Xhosa people borrowed some Khoisan words along with their pronunciation, for instance, the click sounds of the Khoisan languages".

The Bantu ancestor of Xhosa did not have clicks, which attest to a strong historical contact with a San language that did. An estimated 15% of Xhosa vocabulary is of San origin. In the modern period, it has also borrowed, slightly, from both Afrikaans and English.

Role in modern society

The role of indigenous languages in South Africa is complex and ambiguous. Their use in education has been governed by legislation, beginning with the Bantu Education Act, 1953.

At present, Xhosa is used as the main language of instruction in many primary schools and some secondary schools, but is largely replaced by English after the early primary grades, even in schools mainly serving Xhosa-speaking communities. The language is also studied as a subject.

The language of instruction at universities in South Africa is English or Afrikaans, and Xhosa is taught as a subject, both for native and for non-native speakers.

Literary works, including prose and poetry, are available in Xhosa, as are newspapers and magazines. The first printed word in Xhosa came out in 1823 from the Lovedale Press in the Alice region of the Eastern Cape. But, as with any language, Xhosa had a rich history of oral traditions from which the society taught, informed, and entertained one another. The first Bible translation was in 1859, produced in part by Henry Hare Dugmore. The South African Broadcasting Corporation broadcasts in Xhosa on both radio (on Umhlobo Wenene FM) and television, and films, plays and music are also produced in the language. The best-known performer of Xhosa songs outside South Africa was Miriam Makeba, whose Click Song #1 (Xhosa Qongqothwane) and "Click Song #2" (Baxabene Ooxam) are known for their large number of click sounds.

In 1996, the literacy rate for first-language Xhosa speakers was estimated at 50%.

Anthem

Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika is part of the national anthem of South Africa, national anthem of Tanzania and Zambia, and the former anthem of Zimbabwe and Namibia. It is a Methodist hymn written in Xhosa by Enoch Sontonga in 1897. The original stanza was:

Nkosi, sikelel' iAfrika;

Maluphakamis' uphondo lwayo;

Yiva imithandazo yethu

Nkosi sikelela, thina lusapho lwayo.

Lord, bless Africa;

May her horn rise high up;

Hear Thou our prayers

Lord, bless us, your family.

Additional stanzas were written later by Sontonga and other writers, with the original verse translated into Sotho and Afrikaans, as well as English.

See also

• Xhosa calendar
• Henry Hare Dugmore, the first translator of the Scriptures into Xhosa
• U-Carmen eKhayelitsha, a 2005 Xhosa film adaptation of Bizet's Carmen
• UCLA Language Materials Project, an online project for teaching languages, including Xhosa.

External links

• Xhosa language profile (at UCLA Language Materials Project)
• PanAfrican L10n page on Xhosa
• Learn Xhosa
• Xhosa basic lexicon at the Global Lexicostatistical Database
• Paradisec has a collections of Arthur Capell's materials (AC1), which include Xhosa language materials