- Official language in
- South Africa, Zimbabwe
- Script
- Latin
- Speakers
- 8.2M (2011)
Where it's spoken
isiXhosa is one of the eleven official languages of the Republic of South Africa under section 6 of its Constitution. It is also one of the sixteen officially recognized languages of Zimbabwe. According to a University of Cape Town dissertation on isiXhosa, it is the second most widely spoken first language in South Africa, with over eight million first-language speakers and an estimated eleven million second-language speakers. Statistics South Africa's census shows that far more people give isiXhosa as their first language in Eastern Cape province than in any other province of the country.
Sources
- Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996 — Chapter 1, Section 6 (Languages) — Section 6(1), official languages
- Constitution of Zimbabwe, 2013 — Section 6 (Languages) — Section 6(1), officially recognized languages
- Statistics South Africa (2012). Census 2011: Census in Brief (Report No. 03-01-41) — Table 2.5, p.23, population by first language and province
- Futuse, Liziwe (2019). "An examination of how loanwords in a corpus of spoken and written contemporary isiXhosa are incorporated into the noun class system of isiXhosa." Master's dissertation, University of Cape Town — p.22, speaker counts
Script & pronunciation
isiXhosa is written in the Latin alphabet. Three of its consonants are clicks, each written with its own letter: c for a dental click, q for a post-alveolar click, and x for a lateral click. This app's card Uxolo ("Sorry / Excuse me / Peace") begins with x, the letter for the lateral click.
Sources
Grammar essentials
isiXhosa organizes its nouns into an extensive system of noun classes, each identified by its own prefix; a University of Cape Town dissertation counts fifteen such classes and describes the resulting system of grammatical agreement across the language as exceptionally stable. Class 1 (prefix um-) marks a singular personal noun, such as umntu ("person"), while Class 2 (prefix aba-) marks its plural, as in abantu ("persons"); a numeral that counts such nouns carries a matching form, as in this app's cards Umntu omnye ("one person") and Abantu ababini ("two people"). isiXhosa verbs likewise carry a subject prefix that changes with the grammatical person of the subject: the first-person-singular prefix ndi- appears in this app's card Ndiphilile ("I am well, thank you"), and the second-person-singular prefix u- appears in Unjani? ("How are you?"). Negating a verb adds the prefix a- before the subject prefix, as in this app's card Andithetha isiXhosa ("I can't speak isiXhosa"), the negative of ndithetha ("I speak").
Sources
Politeness & etiquette
isiXhosa greetings change with the number of people addressed: this app's card Molo ("hello," to one person) becomes Molweni when speaking to more than one person, marked by the suffix -ni. South Africa's Department of Basic Education lists molo and unjani? ("how are you?") — together with the reply ndiphilile ("I am well") — among the basic greetings taught to first-time learners of isiXhosa. Farewells also depend on who is leaving and who is staying: this app's card Usale kakuhle ("stay well") is said to the person who remains, while Uhambe kakuhle ("go well") is said to the person who is leaving. Enkosi ("thank you") is this app's card for a basic thanks, and Uxolo serves both as an apology and as a way to get someone's attention.