When plain voiceless clicks (c, x, q) are prenasalized, they become slack voiced nasal (ngc, ngx, ngq). It is a Bantu language closely related to Zulu, Swazi, and Ndebele. 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. In keeping with many other Bantu languages, Xhosa is an agglutinative language, with an array of prefixes and suffixes that are attached to root words. All languages use sound symbolism to some extent, and, while there are indeed examples of clicks functioning in this way (for example, !, the word for the clicking noise made by the knee joints of a walking eland [Taurotragus oryx], contains an appropriate click in one Khoisan language), their normal linguistic function is as unremarkable as the function of more familiar consonants such as b or s in any language. are about 8.2 million native speakers of Xhosa, and another 11 million 1. Only phonemic, and thus reflected orthographically, for. The Origins of the Xhosa Language The Xhosa Language has its roots in South Africa from an ethnic group known as the amaXhosa. [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. Xhosa Language - Dialects & Structure - MustGo . Interestingly, the word Xhosa is from the Khoisan language and means "The angry men". Xhosa, Zulu, Ndelebele and Swati share most of their basic vocabulary as well as grammar. Implosive consonants Xhosa, Languages Gulper/Khoisan Peoples/About World Languages/Wikipedia/The Week. 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. (Free PDF Download). The Xhosa language (Isixhosa), of which there are variations, is part of the Nguni language group. Xhosa beliefs recognise the presence of ancestral spirits and a supreme authority. It's a wrap! Khoisan languages | Britannica 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. ), palatal (), and lateral (). Khoisan Identity | South African History Online Most syllables end in a vowel, and there are no consonant clusters. Thus, a more correct spelling is Khoesaan. The verb root occupies the 0 position. For the Mande language spoken in Burkina Faso, see, Map showing the distribution of the Khoisan languages (yellow), Grammatically, the southern Khoisan languages are generally, Greenberg, Joseph H. 1955. Lambya, ), Khoisan Linguistic Studies . By Mark Dingemanse [GFDL, CC-BY-SA-3.0 or CC BY 2.5], via Wikimedia Commons. It is spoken by the Xhosa people in South Africa, and has around 8 million speakers. In Xhosa culture, women are easily recognised by their heavy dress, matching turban and coloured dots . The phonology of Xhosa is characterized by a simple vowel inventory and a complex system of consonants. 1998. New Haven: Compass Publishing Company. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. 1 Before monosyllabic stems, e.g. 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]. By distribution over land, Xhosa is the most widely spoken African language (while Zulu is most widely spoken in terms of population). According to the 2011 census there The language of instruction at universities in South Africa is English or Afrikaans (to a diminishing extent[21]), and Xhosa is taught as a subject, both for native and for non-native speakers. Although vowel length distinguishes word meaning, the length is not represented in writing, except for and . Xhosa has a complex system of consonants, including some uncommon ones. The ceremonial slaughtering of animals is one of the many ways by which ancestors are invoked. [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]. 1998. Palatalisation is a change that affects labial consonants whenever they are immediately followed by /j/. Ngqika is considered to be the standard variety. The small town of De Aar is located in the central Groot Karoo along the railway line between Cape Town and Kimberley, which was established in the late 1800s. 2014 - 2023. Long vowels are phonemic but are usually not written except for and , which are each sequences of two vowels with different tones that are realized as long vowels with contour tones ( highlow = falling, lowhigh = rising). A palatal click is a sharp pop made by drawing the tongue down quickly from the roof of the mouth. The Khoisan (Khoesan) language family is the smallest of the language families of Africa. #VisitSouthAfrica https://t.co/xwXs0dxd2l, We've got you covered! Breathy-voiced consonants Language/Xhosa/Grammar/How-to-Use-Have - polyglotclub.com Like other Southern Bantu languages, Xhosa has borrowed words from the Khoisan languages, as well as from English and Afrikaans. Southern Khoisan has a fifth click, the bilabial . http://www.gononda.com/xhosa/, Xhosa phrases Xhosa beliefs dictate that people turn to a diviner or healer, usually attired in a headdress and shawl of fur, when needing advice on how to deal with the spirits, help with illnesses, or, ward off evil from unnatural forces such as the, a potentially malevolent goblin who attacks at night. I don't know, but I think you can compare them to Danish, Norwegian and Swedish. Xhosa. Although little Kwadi data is available, proto-KhoeKwadi reconstructions have been made for pronouns and some basic vocabulary. The word order is subjectverbobject, like in English. Xhosa is considered to be a Category II language in terms of difficulty for speakers of English. 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. Linguistics 112 lecture, Department of Linguistics. "Toward reconstructing Proto-South Khoisan." There are two groups of languages in southern Africa that have clicks: the Khoisan languages and certain languages of the Niger-Congo family, most notably Zulu and Xhosa. Kamba, Clicks Other figures are the huge lightning bird (impundudu), and the gentleabantubomlambo aquatic human-like beings who accept into their family those who drown. Subscribe using the form below to have all of my posts delivered directly to your email. The Khoisan languages were once spoken across all of southern Africa from southern Angola in the west to Swaziland in the east and the Cape of Good Hope in the south (see the map). [citation needed], Khoisan was proposed as one of the four families of African languages in Joseph Greenberg's classification (19491954, revised in 1963). There are books, magazines and newspapers in Xhosa, as well as TV and radio programmes, films, plays and songs. 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. [8] Despite their shared clicks, the Khoisan languages diverge significantly from each other. Consequently, the languages with the greatest numbers of consonants in the world are Khoisan. Their language is often called the click, language because of its three dominant clicks, which. 2000. Xhosa - Wikipedia Archaeological evidence suggests that the Khoisan people appeared in southern Africa 60,000 years ago. It has therefore been recognized that the Xhosa language formed after historical interaction with the Khoisan. Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). Start learning here! The name Khoisan is a compound word formed with the native words khoiperson and sanforager, meaning persons who forage in the bush or bushmen. Colours | But this line of thinking has proved fruitless. The pocket of air produced by the resulting enclosure is rarefied by the sucking action of the tongue. There are some exceptions, for instance, the Sandawe language in Tanzania whose speakers have maintained a relatively stable linguistic community. Clicks are ingressive consonantal stops produced by an intake of air followed by a sudden withdrawal of the tongue from the soft palate, front teeth, or back teeth and hard palate. 1997. Planning a trip? Nguni languages | Britannica [14] Also, a small community of Xhosa speakers (18,000) live in Quthing District, Lesotho.[15]. This distinctive linguistic characteristic was adopted by a number of neighbouring Bantu languages, such as Xhosa and Zulu in South Africa. 15000 characters left today. 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 | South African History Online Before the Bantu expansion, Khoisan languages, or languages like them, were likely spread throughout southern and eastern Africa. There is a series of six dental clicks, represented by the letter c, similar to the sound represented in English by "tut-tut" or "tsk-tsk"; a series of six alveolar lateral clicks, represented by the letter x, similar to the sound used to call horses; and a series of alveolar clicks, represented by the letter q, that sound somewhat like a cork pulled from a bottle. Eton, Loma, Xhosa, derived from the Khoisan language, refers to "angry men." The majority of the South African languages that use tongue-clicking have roots in the indigenous Khoisan . Khoisan languages are best known for their use of click consonants as phonemes. OshiWambo, These are typically written with characters such as and . Clicks are quite versatile as consonants, as they involve two articulations of the tongue which can operate partially independently. 9 reasons youre not fluentYET & how to fix it! Rafiki, the sagely mandrill chants Xhosa on The Lion King and its reboot. Tones are rarely marked in the written language, but they can be indicated a [], [], [], []. 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. Anthony Traill at first accepted Khoisan (Traill 1986), but by 1998 concluded that it could not be demonstrated with current data and methods, rejecting it as based on a single typological criterion: the presence of clicks. The language is also rich in idioms. An alveolar click sounds like the popping of a cork made by putting the tongue just behind the ridge in back of the front teeth. Choose your English to Xhosa translation service. 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 and Transkei. Occasionally other languages are said by laypeople to have "click" sounds. #CapeTownEPrix In southern Africa, they came into contact with Khoisan-speaking people. https://www.memrise.com/course/1572/xhosa-an-intro/ 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. Xhosa alphabet, pronunciation and language - Omniglot iliso (eye), uluhlu (list). This article was most recently revised and updated by, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Xhosa-language. The X and H languages are even more complex. https://www.twinkl.co.za/resources/south-africa-resources/isixhosa-foundation-phase-english-south-africa-suid-afrika/2, Online Xhosa dictionaries The Bantu languages adopted the use of clicks from neighboring, displaced, or absorbed Khoisan populations (or from other Bantu languages), often through intermarriage, while the Dahalo are thought to have retained clicks from an earlier language when they shifted to speaking a Cushitic language; if so, the pre-Dahalo language may have been something like Hadza or Sandawe. 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. All Rights Reserved. The first is dental clicks with the tongue pressing against the back of the teeth. When aspirated clicks (ch, xh, qh) are prenasalised, the silent letter k is added (nkc, nkx, nkq) to prevent confusion with the nasal clicks nc, nx, nq, and are actually distinct sounds. Kuria, women are easily recognised by their heavy dress, matching turban and coloured dots decorating their faces. As a Bantu language, Xhosa and Zulu people are often able to understand one another. 4. They are currently restricted to the Kalahari Desert, primarily in Namibia and Botswana, and to the Rift Valley in central Tanzania.[2]. The Khoikhoi were once called Hottentots by Europeans. 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). This is usually a misnomer for ejective consonants, which are found across much of the world, or is a reference to paralinguistic use of clicks such as English tsk! Khoisan languages, a unique group of African languages spoken mainly in southern Africa, with two outlying languages found in eastern Africa. The basic clicks are four: dental (|), alveolar (! Haya, The Xhosa comprise a number of clans such as Gcaleka, Ngika, Ndlambe, Dushane and the Qayi. ", 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. Xhosa language - Wikipedia

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