is xhosa a khoisan language

and is made by putting the tongue just behind the front teeth. Amongs https://t.co/Un48auA2t0, South African Tourism's initiatives and projects within the "growing green economy" are highlighted through partner https://t.co/BlBqEBi0pj, Were proud and excited to be associated with @CapeTownEprix in hosting the first ABB FIA Formula E World champions https://t.co/0prwWK7DrC, It is great to hear you are feeling our vibe Mpho! C'est la deuxime langue la plus parle du pays. Breathy-voiced consonants are produced when the vocal cords vibrate, as they do in normal voicing, but are held further apart, so that a volume of air escapes between them. Otherwise, they tend to be tenuis (plain) stops. There are books, Xhosa is one of four sister languages called Nguni Languages (Ndebele, Swati, Xhosa and Zulu) which are all mutually intelligible. Let me know using thecomments section below or join me on social media to start a conversation. All Rights Reserved. Xhosa (isiXhosa) is the southernmost member of the Bantoid group of the Niger-Congo language family in Africa. Kimbundu, For Black Panther, director Ryan Coogler "wanted to make it a priority to use Xhosa as much as possible" in the script, and provided dialect coaches for the film's actors. Of all the Khoisan languages, only Nama enjoys official recognition. 2000. The Khoisan (Khoesan) language family is the smallest of the language families of Africa. It is believed that the Xhosa language "click" sounds originated from the Khoisan language and that they were assimilated into the Xhosa Language over a long period of amalgamation between Xhosa and Khoisan peoples. ", Commission for Cultural, Religious and Linguistic Community Rights, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Khoisan_languages&oldid=1132757639, Short description is different from Wikidata, Wikipedia articles needing clarification from July 2020, Articles with unsourced statements from April 2019, Articles with unsourced statements from February 2019, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, Ehret, Christopher. It forms part of the ornamentation that reflects the different stages of a womans life. Nama, in particular, has a long tradition of literacy. This came about because South African actor John Kani, a native of the Eastern Cape province who plays Wakandan King T'Chaka, speaks Xhosa and suggested that the directors of the fictional Civil War incorporate a dialogue in the language. The chart below (taken from Some elements of the structure of the Xhosa verb) shows some of the possible slots for prefixes and suffixes. At the secondary level, instruction in schools serving Xhosa-speaking students is in English. Not all languages using clicks as phonemes are considered Khoisan. Only phonemic, and thus reflected orthographically, for. An estimated 15% of Xhosa vocabulary is of Khoisan origin. The linguistic use of clicks, whether original or borrowed, is restricted to these few African languages, with one exception: Damin. [15], John Bennie was a Scottish Presbyterian missionary and early Xhosa linguist. Copyright 1995-2023 Southafrica.com. Grazie! Southern Khoisan languages have a very high ratio of words containing clicks as compared to those that do not contain them. Swati and Ndebele, and mutually intelligible with them to some extent. What I love most about uTalk is that you can jump around their extensive library of topics and choose what you want to learn, when you want, and at your own pace. Click consonants can be modified in a variety of ways. Here are a few of these words. While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. Thus, the word for people is abantu in all these languages. Xhosa is rich in uncommon consonants. [13] There is a small but significant Xhosa community of about 200,000 in Zimbabwe. A dental click sounds like tsk, tsk! Densely populated with uncommon consonants, Xhosa consists of the usual pulmonic egressive sounds (used in English), ejectives, 15 clicks and an implosive. Numbers | Each click can combine with a number of accompanying articulations such as voicing, nasality, aspiration, and ejection producing a potentially large number of consonantal sounds: Nama has 20, Gwi 52, Juhoan 55 and Xo 83. (Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights), Some corrections to this page by Michael Peter Fstumum, Information about Xhosa | Xhosa has an inventory of ten vowels: [a], [~e], [i], [~o] and [u] written a, e, i, o and u in order, all occurring in both long and short. Author of, Professor Emeritus, Department of Linguistics, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. The spirits of those who have passed on are honoured in rituals and ceremonies. #CapeTownEPrix It is a Bantu language closely related to Zulu, Swazi, and Ndebele. The Khoisan languages (/ksn/; also Khoesan or Khoesaan) are a number of African languages once classified together, originally by Joseph Greenberg. They write new content and verify and edit content received from contributors. I will never give away, trade or sell your email address. are about 8.2 million native speakers of Xhosa, and another 11 million 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. Subscribe using the form below to have all of my posts delivered directly to your email. Photography and infographics cannot be used without permission.Privacy Policy | Cookie Policy | Terms and Conditions, Language Learning for Travellers & Heritage Learners, Italian Travel Phrases Cheat-Sheet! Tentative distribution of the Khoisan languages, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Khoisan-languages, Fu Jen Catholic University - Graduate School of Linguistics - The Khoisan Language Family. work in Xhosa was published in 1823. When consonants are prenasalised, their pronunciation and spelling may change. Isewell [CC BY-SA 2.5], via Wikimedia Commons. No change when the following consonant is itself a nasal. Xhosa (formerly spelled Xosa) is an official language of South Africa, natively spoken by around 7.9 million people which is about around 16% of the population of South Africa. Nkore, South Africa is the native land of Xhosa, which is spoken chiefly in the Eastern Cape Province. Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed this post. Hadza (Hatsa), one of the East African Khoisan languages, is a remarkable exception to this, having retained its vitality through a pattern of stable bilingualism with Swahili, the dominant Bantu language in the area. After migrating to southern Africa, the Xhosa and Zulu adopted the click consonants unique to the Khoisan and loaned some words. The language is an important part of Khois. Kikuyu, Tswa, Most syllables end in a vowel, and there are no consonant clusters. Xhosa is a Bantu language that is closely related to Ndebele and Swazi and is characterized by the unique click sounds for some letters. It is also taught in universities. They are called upon for guidance, support, or to turn the tide of fortune. A certain amount of intermarriage with the Khoisan people they found here also gave rise to clans like the Gqunkhwebe. Xhosa nouns belong to 17 different classes, roughly based on semantic categories, e.g., there are classes for human beings, animals, plants, objects of various shapes, etc. In Haacke, Wilfrid and Elderkin, Edward Derek (eds. The more notable characteristic is their depressor effect on the tone of the syllable.[19]. 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. Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree. . Take a look at Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Xhosa. 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. As with other South African languages, Xhosa is characterized by respectful forms of address for elders and in-laws. She hypothesizes that this took place within efforts to prevent the spread of English during European colonization and prevent the entrance of the majority into the middle class.[7]. Khoisan languages, characterised by implosive consonants or 'clicks', belonged to a totally different language family from those of the Bantu speakers. "History of Click-Speaking Populations of Africa Inferred from mtDNA and Y Chromosome Genetic Variation", "The Kxa Family: A New Khoisan Genealogy", . Yao, Songe, Xhosa, 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. In, Khler, O. Total number of users in all countries is 19.2 million (Ethnologue). Other figures are the huge lightning bird (impundudu), and the gentleabantubomlambo aquatic human-like beings who accept into their family those who drown. In South Africa a variation of this process allowed the Khoisan languages to exert a powerful linguistic influence on the dominant languages before they disappeared, leaving Afrikaans and some Bantu languages with a number of distinctive Khoisan features. The Xhosa comprise a number of clans such as Gcaleka, Ngika, Ndlambe, Dushane and the Qayi. Southern Sotho, The following three are languages from the Khoe family, the Kxa family, and the Tuu family, respectively. for $0.07/word. Xhosa is one of the 11 official languages recognized by the South African Constitution, and in 2006 it was determined that just over 7 million South Africans speak Xhosa as a home language. 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. Their use in education has been governed by legislation, beginning with the Bantu Education Act, 1953.[12]. The following table lists the consonant phonemes of the language, with the pronunciation in IPA on the left and the orthography on the right: In addition to the ejective affricate [t], the spelling tsh may also be used for either of the aspirated affricates [ts] and [t]. Xhosa beliefs recognise the presence of ancestral spirits and a supreme authority. Northern Ndebele (South Africa), A system for writing Xhosa using the Latin alphabet was devised by 1. There are five places of articulation at which click consonants occur. Impariamo insieme! ), Africa: Journal of the International African Institute. Breathy-voiced consonants http://glosbe.com/en/xh/ . [6] Dimmendaal (2008) summarized the general view with, "it has to be concluded that Greenberg's intuitions on the genetic unity of Khoisan could not be confirmed by subsequent research. This means I earn a commission if you click on any of them and buy something. This article was most recently revised and updated by, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Xhosa-language. (Click here for an audio sample of the extinct !Ora language.) Gwere, It is spoken by the Xhosa people in South Africa, and has around 8 million speakers. Other languages have little more than 1,000 speakers while several are known to have become extinct. In Xhosa, the verb "have" is represented by the word "nga" and its various forms. Khoisan / k s n /, or Khoe-Sn (pronounced [kxoesan]), according to the contemporary Khoekhoegowab orthography, is a catch-all term for those indigenous peoples of Southern Africa who do not speak one of the Bantu languages, combining the Khoekhoen (formerly "Khoikhoi") and the Sn or Skhoen (Saake in the Nng language).. A Haiom language is listed in most Khoisan references. Beadwork similar to the Ndebele is an integral aspect of Xhosa tradition. It is closely related to Zulu, Swati, and Ndebele. Luvale, . 4 Before monosyllabic stems in some words. 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. Christian missionaries during the early 19th century. 1. These are the only languages known to have clicks in normal vocabulary. They are called upon for guidance, support. Get her free guide 9 reasons youre not fluentYET & how to fix it! 'The adaptation of non-click consonants in Xhosa'. Although little Kwadi data is available, proto-KhoeKwadi reconstructions have been made for pronouns and some basic vocabulary. Emeritus Professor of African Studies; former Director, Institute for African Studies, University of Cologne. The orthographic b in mb is the voiced plosive [mb]. F https://t.co/s7IkqA9Utl, It feels good to have @KevinHart4real also known as Mpho here in Johannesburg, South Africa. Xhosa - a Bantu language closely related to Zulu. Group of African language families with click consonants, "San language" redirects here. There are no definite or indefinite articles. Duala, Xhosa is used in primary schools up to the second grade and is studied as a subject in both primary and secondary schools up to the tenth grade. By Mark Dingemanse [GFDL, CC-BY-SA-3.0 or CC BY 2.5], via Wikimedia Commons. Learn more about the Khoisan language family on Ethnologue. in a spirit of brotherhood. XXhosa tradition is an extremely powerful social force binding together these people of Eastern Cape province, most evident in Xhosa beliefs revering their ancestors. Omissions? The various parts of the sentence must agree in both class and number.[12]. The rest of the elements are placed to the left or to the right of the verb root. Xhosa: [noun] a member of a Bantu-speaking people of Eastern Cape province. Herero, . Making the Khoisan languages amongst the most ancient of all human tongues. (Reprints, with minor corrections, a series of eight articles published in the ''Southwestern Journal of Anthropology'' from 1949 to 1954. https://t.co/qATXK8AEqg, A room filled with great minds, sharing a valuable outlook on living the legacy of the @NelsonMandela Foundation. 1971. Clicks are spreading to a few additional neighboring languages. The 15 clicks (which learners tend to battle with the most) are divided into three categories. Tshiluba, Xhosa is considered to be a Category II language in terms of difficulty for speakers of English. The 'X' in Xhosa, for example, represents a type of . Subscribe to my newsletter to receive detailed travel guides, exclusive travel and language learning tips, priority access to giveaways and more! Interestingly, the word Xhosa is from the Khoisan language and means The angry men. Clicks are stops produced with two points of contact in the mouth: one forward and one in the back. Sena, As a balance to consonant complexity, strict rules restrict clicks and most of the non-clicks to the beginning of a word being followed always by a vowel. The Xhosa language (Isixhosa), of which there are variations, is part of the Nguni language group. Eastern Cape, Western Cape, Free State and Northern Cape. Let us know where you'll be watching this weekend. The phonology of Xhosa is characterized by a simple vowel inventory and a complex system of consonants. languages as a result of long and extensive interaction between the "Die Khoisan-Familie." Xhosa is a Bantu language spoken in South Africa, mainly in the [9] It has perhaps the heaviest functional load of click consonants in a Bantu language (approximately tied with Yeyi), with one count finding that 10% of basic vocabulary items contained a click.[10]. Ngqika is considered to be the standard variety. Xhosa has several dialects, including Mpondo (Pondo), Xesibe, Bomwana, Gaika, Gcaleka, Thembu, Mpondomise, Ndlambe (Ethnologue). The Xhosa language is a member of the Bantu family and is closely related to Zulu. Its speakers and people belonging to the group are called isiXhosa. Learning Xhosa is a challenging, but rewarding experience. In contrast to the San who spoke highly divergent languages, the Khoikhoi spoke closely related dialects of the same language. Forms of "Nga" ##. They are not prenasalized, as can be seen in words such as , Incorrectly described as glottal clicks by, Last edited on 25 February 2023, at 23:55, "Xhosa alphabet, pronunciation and language", "South Africa Population grows to 44.8 Million", "Wakanda Is a Fake Country, but the African Language in 'Black Panther' is Real", Xhosa basic lexicon at the Global Lexicostatistical Database, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Xhosa_language&oldid=1141620598, [mp], [nt], [nt], [k], [n], [n], [n]. [14] Also, a small community of Xhosa speakers (18,000) live in Quthing District, Lesotho.[15]. Digo, Implosive consonants are produced by inhaling rather than exhaling the air. Thus their language is variously said to be extinct or to have 18,000 speakers, to be Ju or to be Khoe.

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