Xhosa / Ë k ÉË s É, Ë k oÊ s É / (Xhosa: [áµÇÊ°Ésa]), [missing tone] also isiXhosa, is a Nguni Bantu language and one of the official languages of South Africa and Zimbabwe. Dictionary. The language of instruction at universities in South Africa is English or Afrikaans, and Xhosa is taught as a subject, both for native and for non-native speakers. The more notable characteristic is their depressor effect on the tone of the syllable.[21]. [12] It is the second most common Bantu home language in South Africa as a whole. The prenasalized versions have a very short voicing at the onset which then releases in an ejective, like the prenasalized affricates, while the phonemically nasal clicks have a very long voicing through the consonant. Only phonemic, and thus reflected orthographically, for. Google's free service instantly translates words, phrases, and web pages between English and over 100 other languages. This came about because South African actor John Kani, a native of the Eastern Cape province who plays Wakandan King T'Chaka, is Xhosa and suggested that the directors of the fictional Civil War incorporate a dialogue in the language. – Pharos, Spreekwoorde en waar hulle vandaan kom. Palatalisation is a change that affects labial consonants whenever they are immediately followed by /j/. adj. The various parts of the sentence must agree in both class and number.[12]. Xhosa is spoken as a first language by approximately 8.2 million people and by another 11 million as a second language in South Africa, mostly in Eastern Cape, Western Cape, Gauteng and Northern Cape. 4 Before monosyllabic stems in some words. Xhosa is part of the branch of Nguni languages known as Zunda languages, which also include Zulu, Southern Ndebele and Northern Ndebele. English to Spanish Translation. As in other Bantu languages, nouns in Xhosa are classified into morphological classes, or genders (15 in Xhosa), with different prefixes for both singular and plural. Literary works, including prose and poetry, are available in Xhosa, as are newspapers and magazines. Of or relating to Africa or its peoples, languages, or cultures. Learn more. 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. The murmur no longer shifts to the following vowel. A language that has its roots in close contact between two different languages, one of them usually European, and that develops into a mother tongue in its own right. In the idiom/language of the people. Xhosa has an inventory of ten vowels: [a], [ɛ~e], [i], [ɔ~o] and [u] written a, e, i, o and u in order, all occurring in both long and short. Fricatives become affricated and, if voiceless, they become ejectives as well, at least with some speakers: mf is pronounced [ɱp̪fʼ], ndl is pronounced [ndɮ], n+hl becomes ntl [ntɬʼ], n+z becomes ndz [ndz], etc. Give your staff access to the complete collection of dictionaries and word lists on PharosOnline. The following table gives an overview of Xhosa noun classes, arranged according to singular-plural pairs. Xhosa /ˈkɔːsə, ˈkoʊsə/[5][6][7] (Xhosa: [ᵏǁʰɔsa]),[missing tone] also isiXhosa, is a Nguni Bantu language and one of the official languages of South Africa and Zimbabwe. AmaXhosa migrated to the east coast of Africa and came across Khoisan-speaking people; "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". [11] Zunda languages effectively form a dialect continuum of variously mutually intelligible varieties. Northern Ndebele language in Africa", "South Africa Population grows to 44.8 Million", "Isixhosa Ulwimi Lwabantu Abangesosininzi eZimbabwe: Ukuphila Nokulondolozwa Kwaso", "Wakanda Is a Fake Country, but the African Language in 'Black Panther' is Real", Xhosa basic lexicon at the Global Lexicostatistical Database, Commission for Cultural, Religious and Linguistic Community Rights, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Xhosa_language&oldid=1007737042, Short description is different from Wikidata, Articles containing potentially dated statements from 2003, All articles containing potentially dated statements, Articles needing examples from December 2018, Articles containing potentially dated statements from 1996, Wikipedia articles with SUDOC identifiers, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. 1 Before monosyllabic stems, e.g. Download. Search words are marked in the results for, More than 30 dictionary titles on PharosOnline. [15] Also, a small community of Xhosa speakers (18,000) live in Quthing District, Lesotho. John Bennie was a Scottish Presbyterian missionary and early Xhosa linguist. Aarons & Reynolds, 2003, "South African Sign Language", in Monaghan, ed., The following languages, namely Chewa, Chibarwe, English, Kalanga, Koisan, Nambya, Ndau, Ndebele, Shangani, Shona, sign language, Sotho, Tonga, Tswana, Venda, and Xhosa are the officially recognised languages of Zimbabwe. When consonants are prenasalised, their pronunciation and spelling may change. Otherwise, they tend to be tenuis (plain) stops. (eds), These are analogous to the slack-voice nasals, "Xhosa alphabet, pronunciation and language", "isiNdebele for beginners. It has 18 click consonants (in comparison, Juǀ'hoan, spoken in Botswana and Namibia, has 48, and Taa, with roughly 4,000 speakers in Botswana, has 83). Similarly, the tenuis (plain) clicks are often glottalised, with a long voice onset time, but that is uncommon. A selection of the best free Translators, Dictionaries and language Courses on the web. It is a Methodist hymn written in Xhosa by Enoch Sontonga in 1897. No change when the following consonant is itself a nasal. Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika is part of the national anthem of South Africa, national anthem of Tanzania and Zambia, and the former anthem of Zimbabwe and Namibia. Xhosa is a tonal language with two inherent phonemic tones: low and high. Installing a dictionary add-on will add a new language option to your spell-checker, which checks your spelling as you type in Firefox. The Xhosa noun consists of two essential parts, the prefix and the stem. [8][9] Xhosa is spoken as a first language by approximately 8.2 million people and by another 11 million as a second language in South Africa, mostly in Eastern Cape, Western Cape, Gauteng and Northern Cape. – Pharos, English Dictionary for South African Schools. Look up words to find out what they mean, how to spell or pronounce them. The Xhosa language employs 26 letters from the Latin alphabet. When plain voiceless clicks (c, x, q) are prenasalized, they become slack voiced nasal (ngc, ngx, ngq). In die volksmond. Language packs change your browser's interface language, including menu options and settings. The original stanza was: Additional stanzas were written later by Sontonga and other writers, with the original verse translated into Sotho and Afrikaans, as well as English. In the Marvel Cinematic Universe films Captain America: Civil War and Black Panther, the language spoken in the fictional African nation of Wakanda is Xhosa. [16], Called isiXhosa sengingqi ('local Xhosa'), Xhosa has several dialects. Whenever /w/ follows a labial consonant, it changes to /j/, which then triggers palatalisation of the consonant. Various parts of speech that qualify a noun must agree with the noun according to its gender. [16] In the modern period, it has also borrowed, slightly, from both Afrikaans and English. Online language translators. Easy to use, and for all languages. While palatalisation occurred historically, it is still productive, as is shown by palatalization before the passive suffix /-w/. Provide faculty members and students with access to all of the dictionaries and word lists on PharosOnline. Besides pulmonic egressive sounds, which are found in all spoken languages, it has a series of ejective stops and one implosive stop. The word order is subject–verb–object, like in English. An estimated 15% of Xhosa vocabulary is of San origin. n. PharosOnline is a collection of general and subject dictionaries on the internet. 3 The placeholder N in the prefixes iN- and iiN- for m, n or no letter at all. as opposed to its formal or literary language: The two men must be from around here, because they spoke to each other in the vernacular of the region. isandla/izandla (hand/hands). lar noun the common informal language of a country, region etc. 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]. Other Bible study tools include: Greek/Hebrew < & > English/Spanish/French dictionary, Matthew Henry's Commentary, Easton's Bible Dictionary, and Naves Topical Search. English to Latin translation service by ImTranslator will assist you in getting an instant translation of words, phrases and texts from English to Latin and other languages. Nguni languages are, in turn, part of the much larger group of Bantu languages. 2002. [12][13], Xhosa is the most widely distributed African language in South Africa, though the most widely spoken African language is Zulu. Often the developed product of a pidgin language. Translation. They are truly voiced only after nasals, but the oral occlusion is then very short in stops, and it usually does not occur at all in clicks. Afrikaans to English translation service by ImTranslator will assist you in getting an instant translation of words, phrases and texts from Afrikaans to English and other languages. ─ Pharos, The Essential Companion for Writers and Editors, 12th floor, Media24 Centre 40 Heerengracht Street Cape Town 8001. However, some of the letters have a different pronunciation than as in English. The onset cluster /kl/ from phonologized loanwords such as, The unwritten glottal stop is present in words like, This page was last edited on 19 February 2021, at 17:45. English to Latin Translation provides the most convenient access to online translation ⦠"Language in South Africa: the role of language in national transformation, reconstruction and development.". Afrikaans to English Translation provides the most convenient access to online translation service powered by various machine translation engines. Their use in education has been governed by legislation, beginning with the Bantu Education Act, 1953.[12]. Aspirated clicks become prenasalized ejected clicks. Choose from three PharosOnline dictionary subscription offers: General Dictionaries, Subject Dictionaries and a combined package consisting of both General and Subject Dictionaries. In keeping with many other Southern Bantu languages, Xhosa is an agglutinative language, with an array of prefixes and suffixes that are attached to root words. Prenasalisation occurs in several contexts, including on roots with the class 9 prefix /iN-/, for example on an adjective which is feature-matching its noun: /iN- + ɬɛ/ → [intɬɛ] "beautiful" (of a class 9 word like inja "dog"). Xhosa is rich in uncommon consonants. The language is also studied as a subject. They refer to themselves as the amaXhosa and their language as Xhosa. ... Afrikaans-Xhosa (Pharos 1998) Afrikaans-Japannese Woordeboek (Kotzé 2015) Pansegrouw ⦠The South African Broadcasting Corporation broadcasts in Xhosa on both radio (on Umhlobo Wenene FM) and television, and films, plays and music are also produced in the language. 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. Tone, stress and vowel length are not indicated. â Pharos, English Dictionary for South African Schools . 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. iliso (eye), uluhlu (list). Xhosa is, to some extent, mutually intelligible with Zulu and Northern Ndebele, and other Nguni languages to a lesser extent. The first Bible translation was in 1859, produced in part by Henry Hare Dugmore. Therefore, the absolute duration of voicing is the same as in tenuis stops. English Spanish Translation service is intended to provide an instant English Spanish translation of words, phrases and texts . In popular parlance. Tones are rarely marked in the written language, but they can be indicated a [à], á [á], â [áà], ä [àá]. In Clem et al. Long vowels are phonemic but are usually not written except for â and ä, which are each sequences of two vowels with different tones that are realized as long vowels with contour tones (â high–low = falling, ä low–high = rising). Agreements usually reflect part of the original class with which the word agrees. African synonyms, African pronunciation, African translation, English dictionary definition of African. ImTranslator. [23], Proportion of the South African population that speaks Xhosa at home, Webb, Vic. Additional phonemes are using sequences of multiple letters. 2 is- and iz- replace isi- and izi- respectively before stems beginning with a vowel, e.g. 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. (They may also be voiced between vowels in some speaking styles.) Maho (2009) lists Mpondo (Pondo), Xesibe, Bomvana, Gaika (Ngqika), Gcaleka, Thembu, Mpondomise, Ndlambe, and Hlubi.[4]. 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. It offers a one-stop reference for anyone who wants to communicate effectively in English, Afrikaans, African and other languages. See Sands & Gunnink (2019) "Clicks on the fringes of the Kalahari Basin Area." More than a dictionary PharosOnline is a collection of general and subject dictionaries on the internet. In 1996[update], the literacy rate for first-language Xhosa speakers was estimated at 50%.[16]. Do your employees need easy access to dictionaries? Moreover, Xhosa does not generally tolerate sequences of a labial consonant plus /w/. Translate words, texts and web pages from one language to another: Mandarin Chinese, English, Spanish, Hindi, Russian, Arabic, Portuguese, French (+42 more) [16], The role of indigenous languages in South Africa is complex and ambiguous. The /i/ vowel will be long in the penultimate syllable and short in the last syllable.[17]. The Unbound Bible is a collection of searchable Bibles with: various English versions; Greek; Hebrew; ancient translations; dozens of other language versions. Solve word games with the ⦠That is, da may be pronounced [dʱa̤] (or, equivalently, [d̥a̤]). The breathy voiced glottal fricative [ɦ] 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. The murmured clicks, plosives and affricates are only partially voiced, with the following vowel murmured for some speakers. Support Find your language Interface language: Hlubi is the dialect in the former Ciskei; there is the more distinct Hlubi language further north, where Xhosa meets SeSotho. The verb is modified by affixes to mark subject, object, tense, aspect and mood. PROMT-Online. As of 2003[update] approximately 5.3 million Xhosa-speakers, the majority, live in the Eastern Cape, followed by the Western Cape (approximately 2 million), Gauteng (671,045), the Free State (246,192), KwaZulu-Natal (219,826), North West (214,461), Mpumalanga (46,553), the Northern Cape (51,228), and Limpopo (14,225). 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 [tʃʼ], the spelling tsh may also be used for either of the aspirated affricates [tsʰ] and [tʃʰ]. Using the prefixes, nouns can be grouped into noun classes, which are numbered consecutively, to ease comparison with other Bantu languages. 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. [14] There is a small but significant Xhosa community of about 200,000 in Zimbabwe. They are better described as slack voiced than as breathy voiced. Verbs use the following prefixes for the subject and object: The following is a list of phrases that can be used when one visits a region whose primary language is Xhosa: Xhosa-speaking people have inhabited coastal regions of southeastern Africa since before the 16th century. Translate words, phrases and whole texts into other languages. l(. Sign up for our Multiple User Subscription. But, as with any language, Xhosa had a rich history of oral traditions from which the society taught, informed, and entertained one another. Fricatives become affricates. The orthographic b in mb is the voiced plosive [mb]. Text To Speech. [22] The Bantu ancestor of Xhosa did not have clicks, which attests to a strong historical contact with a San language that did.