Xhosa language

Xhosa (isiXhosa) belongs to the Bantu language family. It is one of the official languages of South Africa and is spoken by approximately 7.9 million people. One of the most distinctive features of the language is the prominence of click consonants. The name of the language itself begins with a click.

Xhosa is the southernmost branch of the Nguni languages, related to Swati, Northern Ndebele, and Zulu with whom the language is mutually intelligible to an extent. Nguni languages are part of a larger group of Bantu languages, and as such Xhosa is related to languages spoken across much of Africa.

Xhosa is the most widely distributed African language in South Africa. It is the second most common home language in South Africa. The majority of Xhosa speakers live in the Eastern Cape. It is also spoken in the Western Cape, Gauteng, the Free State, KwaZulu-Natal, North West, Mpumalanga, the Northern Cape, and Limpopo. A minority of Xhosa speakers exists in Lesotho.

Xhosa has several dialects, including Gcaleka, Ndlambe, Ngqika /Rharhabe (considered "standard"), Thembu, Bomvana, Mpondomse (Mpondomise), Mpondo, Xesibe, Bhaca, Cele, Hlubi (there is a debate if the Hlubis belong to Xhosa), and Mfengu.

Xhosa is written using a Latin alphabet-based system. Three letters are used to indicate the basic clicks: c for dental clicks, x for lateral clicks, and q for palatal clicks. Xhosa is a tonal language, but tones are not indicated in the written form.

Xhosa-speaking peoples have inhabited coastal regions of southeastern Africa since before the sixteenth century. The members of the ethnic group that speaks Xhosa refer to themselves as the amaXhosa and call their language 'isiXhosa' ('isi-' is a prefix relating to languages).

Almost all languages with clicks are Khoisan languages and the presence of clicks in Xhosa demonstrates the strong historical interaction with its Khoisan neighbours. An estimated 15% of the vocabulary is of Khoekhoe (Khoisan) origin. In the modern period, Xhosa has also borrowed from Afrikaans and English.

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.

Xhosa word order is subject-verb-object. Xhosa is an agglutinative language featuring an array of prefixes and suffixes that are attached to root words. Xhosa nouns are classified into fifteen morphological classes (or genders), with different prefixes for singular and plural. Various parts of speech that qualify a noun must agree with the noun according to its gender. These agreements usually reflect part of the original class that it is agreeing with. Verbs are modified by affixes that mark subject, object, tense, aspect, and mood. The various parts of the sentence must agree in class and number.

Xhosa is a tonal language with two inherent, phonemic tones: low and high. Long vowels are phonemic but are usually not written, except for â and ä which are the results of gemination of two vowels with different tones each and have thereby become long vowels with contour tones.

Xhosa is rich in uncommon consonants. Besides pulmonic egressive sounds, as in English, it has 18 clicks, plus ejectives and an implosive. 15 of the clicks also occur in Zulu, but are used less frequently than in Xhosa.

Information: Wikipedia