Xhosa

Where it’s spoken

Xhosa (isiXhosa) is one of South Africa’s eleven official languages and the home language of the Xhosa people, primarily in the Eastern Cape, Western Cape, and parts of Gauteng. It is closely related to Zulu — the two are mutually intelligible to a significant degree — and to Swati and Southern Ndebele.

What it sounds like

Xhosa is best known for its three click consonants: dental “c” (like a tut-tut), lateral “x” (a sideways gee-up), and palatal “q” (a sharp cork-pop). Each click occurs in aspirated, breathy-voiced, and nasalized forms, yielding many possible articulations. The language is tonal with two contrastive levels and features the 15+ noun-class agreement system typical of Bantu languages.

How it’s written

Xhosa uses the Latin alphabet with c, q, and x marking clicks. Long words are common because of agglutinative morphology. Tone is not marked in standard orthography. The spelling is largely consistent and phonemic.

History

The Xhosa adopted clicks from neighboring Khoekhoe speakers — a textbook case of language contact reshaping phonology. Missionary printing began in 1823; the language gained constitutional status with the 1994 democratic dispensation.