Xhosa (isiXhosa) is the southernmost member of the Bantoid group of the Niger-Congo language family in Africa. It is a national of Namibia, along with English and a number of other regional languages. Janina Brutt-Griffler claims, "given that such colonial borders were generally arbitrarily drawn, they grouped large numbers of ethnic groups that spoke many languages." Let us know where you'll be watching this weekend. Linguistics 112 lecture, Department of Linguistics. See also Khoisan languages, which contains several audio clips. After migrating to southern Africa, the Xhosa and Zulu adopted the click consonants unique to the Khoisan and loaned some words. Shona, With about 800 speakers in Tanzania, Hadza is no longer seen as a Khoisan language and appears to be unrelated to any other language. Vowels can be either short or long. The Khoisan languages (/ksn/; also Khoesan or Khoesaan) are a number of African languages once classified together, originally by Joseph Greenberg. Don't let the learning stop here. Contact Us, 8.2 million people and by 11 million as a second language in South Africa, mostly in Eastern Cape Province and Transkei. The debate about these relationships remains a prominent feature in the linguistic study of Khoisan languages, and the disagreements that sustain it have never been satisfactorily resolved. Xhosa is an unusual and attractive sounding language, though difficult to master. If a woman has children, whom she has raised to be adults, then it is usual to find her seated among her peers smoking a long-handled pipe. Xhosa language, one of the 11 official languages of South Africa, principally spoken by the Xhosa people. Ernst Oswald Johannes Westphal is known for his early rejection of the Khoisan language family (Starostin 2003). People who speak Xhosa as their second language number about 11 million. Christian missionaries during the early 19th century. Ethnologue lists 27 Khoisan languages which are spoken by half a million people or less. Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). 4 Before monosyllabic stems in some words. According to this hypothesis, clicks might have originally served as onomatopoetic imitations of naturally occurring sounds. Enchantment winds through the Xhosa language, dress and rituals. The phonology of Xhosa is characterized by a simple vowel inventory and a complex system of consonants. Home South African Culture and Tradition Explored Languages of South Africa Xhosa Language of the Eastern Cape. In Xhosa, the verb "have" is represented by the word "nga" and its various forms. It forms part of the ornamentation that reflects the different stages of a womans life. Tone, stress and vowel length are not indicated. Choose your English to Xhosa translation service. However, some of the letters have a different pronunciation from English. In Xhosa culture, women are easily recognised by their heavy dress, matching turban and coloured dots decorating their faces. The linguistic use of clicks, whether original or borrowed, is restricted to these few African languages, with one exception: Damin. Gogo, The Nguni languages are unique among Bantu languages in that they have imploded "clicking" phonemes. Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). Bonny Sands (1998) concluded that the family is not demonstrable with current evidence. The release of the forward closure results in a pop-like sound. By distribution over land, Xhosa is the most widely spoken African language (while Zulu is most widely spoken in terms of population). [15], John Bennie was a Scottish Presbyterian missionary and early Xhosa linguist. They are now held to comprise three distinct language families and two language isolates. Xhosa is a member of the Southeastern, or Nguni, subgroup of the Bantu group of the Benue-Congo branch of the Niger-Congo language family. ), palatal (), and lateral (). It is spoken by the Xhosa people in South Africa, and has around 8 million speakers. In this view Khoisan hunters might have developed clicks to camouflage their presence as they stalked their prey in an environment of insect and other noises or might have responded to various situations with onomatopoetic vocalizations containing clicks. Isewell [CC BY-SA 2.5], via Wikimedia Commons. Lambya, #CapeTownEPrix The spirits of those who have passed on are honoured in rituals and ceremonies. Learning materials, Information about the Xhosa language The Khoisan. Swahili, Soga, Xhosa - a Bantu language closely related to Zulu. Bukusu, Marking of the plural number depends on the noun class. Gwere, The breathy voiced glottal fricative [] is sometimes spelled h. The ejectives tend to be ejective only in careful pronunciation or in salient positions and, even then, only for some speakers. Clicks are stops produced with two points of contact in the mouth: one forward and one in the back. Implosive consonants This means I earn a commission if you click on any of them and buy something. The verb root occupies the 0 position. Tower of Babel | Xhosa is part of the branch of Nguni languages, which also include Zulu, Southern Ndebele and Northern Ndebele, called the Zunda languages. Umbundu, , "A Lexicostatistical Approach towards Reconstructing Proto-Khoisan", "From modern Khoisan languages to Proto-Khoisan: The Value of Intermediate Reconstructions. Languages Gulper/Khoisan Peoples/About World Languages/Wikipedia/The Week. You can unsubscribe at any time. (Free PDF Download). Snyman, Jan Winston. South Africa is the native land of Xhosa, which is spoken chiefly in the Eastern Cape Province. They Nguni languages of southern Africa, which include Zulu and Xhosa, are believed to have borrowed their clicks from Khoisan languages. Ewondo, The Xhosa language has been grouped into a number of dialects. languages as a result of long and extensive interaction between the Copyright The Intrepid Guide Ltd 2022. Nyamwezi, In 1996[update], the literacy rate for first-language Xhosa speakers was estimated at 50%.[15]. #CapeTownEPrix Xhosa is a tonal language with two inherent phonemic tones: low and high. Northern Ndebele (South Africa), Tswana, 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. work in Xhosa was published in 1823. It is also spoken in Botswana and Lesotho. ), Africa: Journal of the International African Institute. Khoisan languages Bushman languages, also called San languages, loose grouping of languages that confusingly have been considered to be a separate group within the Khoisan languages. The term Bushman as it is used to describe certain southern African hunter-gatherers is somewhat controversial because it is perceived as racist. Xhosa has the following clicks consonants which can be modified in a variety of ways, such as aspirated, breathy-voiced or nasalized. The rest of the elements are placed to the left or to the right of the verb root. http://glosbe.com/en/xh/ Privacy Policy All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. ), Khoisan Linguistic Studies . isandla/izandla (hand/hands). 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 word "Xhosa" is derived from the Khoisan language and means "angry men". Therefore, Xhosa and Zulu people frequently understand one another, even if they are each speaking their mother tongue. The Khoe family appears to have migrated to southern Africa not long before the Bantu expansion. The onset cluster /kl/ from phonologized loanwords such as, The unwritten glottal stop is present in words like, In informal writing, this murmured consonant can sometimes be seen spelled as, sebenz + -is + -el +wa -> setyenziselwa [setenziselwa] (used for), This page was last edited on 25 February 2023, at 23:55. are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another https://www.ethnologue.com/language/xho, Online Xhosa lessons In the International Phonetic Alphabet, clicks are represented by placing the assigned symbol for the place of click articulation to the left of a symbol for a nonclick sound at the same place of articulation. Xhosa is, to a large extent, mutually intelligible with Zulu and with other Nguni languages to a lesser extent. In southern Africa, they came into contact with Khoisan-speaking people. The chart below (taken from Some elements of the structure of the Xhosa verb) shows some of the possible slots for prefixes and suffixes. Xhosa's click consonants were most likely borrowed from the Khoisan [20] The Bantu ancestor of Xhosa did not have clicks, which attests to a strong historical contact with a Khoisan language that did. Eastern Cape, Western Cape, Free State and Northern Cape. Xhosa is a Bantu language spoken in South Africa, mainly in the Makonde, Damin is an invented ritual language, and has nothing to do with Khoisan. These sounds were borrowed from the Khoisan languages of the original inhabitants of the area. Click consonants can be modified in a variety of ways. 1. Release of the forward closure results in a pop-like sound. North Khoisan is spoken by hunter-gatherers mainly in Namibia. Elsewhere many bilingual Khoisan speakers have tended to shift rapidly to the dominant language, thus ceasing transmission of the mother tongue to children and leaving it to contract and die, sometimes quite abruptly. Xhosa has several dialects, including Mpondo (Pondo), Xesibe, Bomwana, Gaika, Gcaleka, Thembu, Mpondomise, Ndlambe (Ethnologue). Tswa, Bennie, along with John Ross (another missionary), set up a printing press in the Tyhume Valley and the first printed works in Xhosa came out in 1823 from the Lovedale Press in the Alice region of the Eastern Cape. Occasionally other languages are said by laypeople to have "click" sounds. Khoisan Last but not least is the Khoisan family with between 40 - 70 members. Dental clicks are represented by the letter c, alveolar clicks are indicated by q, and lateral clicks are written with the letter x. Vowel length is not always represented in writing. The ceremonial slaughtering of animals is one of the many ways by which ancestors are invoked. A preliminary classification of the !X and u'hasi dialects. The town itself receives an abundant supply of water from an underground source, which is referred to as All trademarks and web sites that appear throughout this site are the property of their respective owners. Today, the few scholars working on these languages treat the three [southern groups] as independent language families that cannot or can no longer be shown to be genetically related" (p.841). All education at the university level is in English or Afrikaans. sokwenza isenzo ongathanda ukuba senziwe kumzalwane wakho. 2014 - 2023. Omissions? Venda, The Xhosa noun consists of two essential parts, the prefix and the stem. Xhosa (/ks, kos/,[5][6][7] Xhosa pronunciation:[ksa]), formerly spelled Xosa and also known by its local name isiXhosa, is a Nguni language and one of the official languages of South Africa and Zimbabwe. But, as with any language, Xhosa had a rich history of oral traditions from which the society taught, informed, and entertained one another. It has 18 click consonants (in comparison, Ju'hoan, spoken in Botswana and Namibia, has 48, and Taa, with roughly 4,000 speakers in Botswana, has 83). The term is a compound adapted from the words khoekhoe person and saan bush dweller in Nama, one of the Khoisan languages, and scholars have applied the wordseither separately or conjoinedto refer to economic, social, physical, and linguistic features of certain aboriginal groups of southern and eastern Africa. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xhosa_language Let me know using thecomments section below or join me on social media to start a conversation. All click and most non-click consonants appear at the beginning of words and are followed by a vowel. . There is some indication that Sandawe (about 40,000 speakers in Tanzania) may be related to the Khoe family, such as a congruent pronominal system and some good Swadesh-list matches, but not enough to establish regular sound correspondences.
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