Zulu language

Zulu (isiZulu) is the language of the Zulu people. It is spoken by about 10 million people, the vast majority of whom live in South Africa. Zulu is the most widely spoken home language in South Africa and is understood by over 50% of the population. It became one of South Africa's eleven official languages in 1994. Zulu belongs to the South-Eastern group of Bantu languages (the Nguni group). Xhosa, the predominant language in the Eastern Cape, and Zulu are mutually intelligible.

The Zulu presence in South Africa dates from about the 14th century AD. The Zulu assimilated many sounds from the San and Khoi languages of the country's earliest inhabitants. Zulu was an oral language until contact with missionaries from Europe, who documented the language using the Latin alphabet. The first grammar book of the Zulu language was published in Norway in 1850 by the Norwegian missionary Hans Schreuder. The first written document in Zulu was a Bible translation that appeared in 1883.

The written form of Zulu was controlled by the Zulu Language Board of KwaZulu-Natal. This board has now been replaced by the Pan South African Language Board that promotes the use of all eleven official languages of South Africa.

English, Dutch and later Afrikaans had been the only official languages used by all South African governments before 1994. However in the Kwazulu bantustan the Zulu language was widely used. All education in the country at the high-school level was in English or Afrikaans. Since the end of apartheid in 1994, Zulu has been enjoying a marked revival.

Like most other Bantu and African languages, Zulu is tonal, though it's written without any indication of tone. Zulu is also known for having depressor consonants, which lower a high tone in the same syllable.

Zulu is a Subject-Verb-Object language. It is an agglutinative language. As in other Bantu languages, Zulu 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.

Its verbal system shows a combination of temporal and aspectual categories in their finite paradigm. Typically verbs have two stems, one for Present-Indefinite and another for Perfect. Different prefixes can be attached to these verbal stems to specify subject agreement and various degrees of past or future tense. Suffixes are also used to show the causative or reciprocal forms of a verb stem.

The Zulu noun consists of two essential parts, the prefix and the stem. Using the prefixes, nouns can be grouped into noun classes, which are numbered consecutively. The grammatical number of the noun is determined by the prefix; thus, all noun classes can be organised into singular and plural pairs.

The Zulu verb has a variable number of components, which are arranged in sequence according to a defined set of rules. The verb stem and the suffix are always present, but the other parts are optional, i.e., their presence depends on the function of the verb in the sentence.
In Zulu, a subject prefix corresponds to the subjective case of English personal pronouns, such as "I" or "he". Unlike personal pronouns, however, Zulu subject prefix cannot stand alone, but must be attached to a verb. Zulu does possess a set of independent personal pronouns; however, these are only used to emphasise the subject to whom they refer. There is a unique subject prefix for each grammatical person and each noun class. The non-initial subject prefixes are used when a further prefix is attached to the subject prefix.

The object prefix is used to designate the direct object or indirect object of a verb. Just like the subject prefixes, object prefixes must be attached to a verb stem. Independent personal pronouns can be used in conjunction with object prefixes as well. There is a unique object prefix for each person and noun class.

Information: Wikipedia