79-579: Inkosi , otherwise appearing as Nkosi , is the Zulu and Xhosa for chieftain in Southern Africa . An inkosi that has authority over several subordinate inkosis is traditionally referred to as an Inkosi Enkhulu (lit. "Great Chieftain"). This version of the title is typically translated as king in English. Zulu language Zulu ( / ˈ z uː l uː / ZOO -loo ), or isiZulu as an endonym ,
158-399: A homorganic nasal consonant (so-called "prenasalisation", described in more detail below) and optionally followed by the consonant /w/ . In addition, syllabic /m̩/ occurs as a reduction of former /mu/ , and acts like a true syllable: it can be syllabic even when not word-initial, and can also carry distinctive tones like a full syllable. It does not necessarily have to be homorganic with
237-424: A breathy consonant syllable, like dla , are [ɮǎ̤ ɮa̤᷈ ɮà̤] . A depressor does not affect a syllable that's already low, but it blocks assimilation to a preceding high tone so that the tone of the depressor syllable and any following low-tone syllables stays low. Prenasalisation occurs whenever a consonant is preceded by a homorganic nasal, either lexically or as a consequence of prefixation. The most notable case of
316-455: A decreasing number of first language Afrikaans speakers in South Africa from 13.5% in 2011 to 10.6% in 2022. The South African Institute of Race Relations (SAIRR) projects that a growing majority of Afrikaans speakers will be Coloured . Afrikaans speakers experience higher employment rates than other South African language groups, though as of 2012 half a million were unemployed. Despite
395-408: A high-tone syllable and another tonic syllable assimilates to that high tone. That is, if the preceding syllable ends on a high tone and the following syllable begins with a high tone (because it is high or falling), the intermediate toneless syllable has its pitch raised as well. When the preceding syllable is high but the following is toneless, the medial toneless syllable adopts a high-tone onset from
474-437: A labial consonant plus /w/ . Whenever /w/ follows a labial consonant, it changes to /j/ , which then triggers palatalization of the consonant. This effect can be seen in the locative forms of nouns ending in -o or -u , which change to -weni and -wini respectively in the locative. If a labial consonant immediately precedes, palatalization is triggered. The change also occurs in nouns beginning in ubu- with
553-586: A lion, Father ) and Siyonqoba (English: We will conquer ) was used. In some movie songs, like "This Land", the voice says Busa leli zwe bo ( Rule this land ) and Busa ngothando bo ( Rule with love ) were used too. The song Siyahamba is a South African hymn originally written in the Zulu language that became popular in North American churches in the 1990s. The remix of the 2019 worldwide hit Jerusalema contains lyrics in Zulu language. Standard Zulu as it
632-417: A lowering effect on pitch, adding a non-phonemic low-tone onset to the normal tone of the syllable. Thus, in syllables with depressor consonants, high tones are realised as rising, and falling tones as rising-then-falling. In both cases, the pitch does not reach as high as in non-depressed syllables. The possible tones on a syllable with a voiceless consonant like hla are [ɬá ɬâ ɬà] , and the possible tones of
711-558: A national, but not official, language. There is a much smaller number of Afrikaans speakers among Zimbabwe's white minority, as most have left the country since 1980. Afrikaans was also a medium of instruction for schools in Bophuthatswana , an Apartheid-era Bantustan . Eldoret in Kenya was founded by Afrikaners. There are also around 30.000 South-Africans in the Netherlands , of which
790-448: A result of word position as well. The remote demonstrative pronouns may appear with the suffix -ana when sentence-final, but only as -ā otherwise. Likewise, the recent past tense of verbs ends in -ile sentence-finally, but is reduced to -ē medially. Moreover, a falling tone can only occur on a long vowel, so the shortening has effects on tone as well. Some words, such as ideophones or interjections, can have stress that deviates from
869-608: A second language. It is widely taught in South African schools, with about 10.3 million second-language students. Afrikaans is offered at many universities outside South Africa, including in the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Poland, Russia and the United States. In Afrikaans grammar, there is no distinction between the infinitive and present forms of verbs, with the exception of the verbs 'to be' and 'to have'. In addition, verbs do not conjugate differently depending on
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#1733084530008948-482: A stem beginning with a vowel. The following changes occur as a result of palatalization: Zulu employs the 26 letters of the ISO basic Latin alphabet . However, some of the letters have different pronunciations than in English. Additional phonemes are written using sequences of multiple letters. Tone, stress and vowel length are not indicated. Reference works and older texts may use additional letters. A common former practice
1027-511: Is "a pure and proper language" for religious purposes, especially among the deeply Calvinist Afrikaans religious community that previously had been sceptical of a Bible translation that varied from the Dutch version that they were used to. In 1983 a fresh translation marked the 50th anniversary of the 1933 version. The final editing of this edition was done by E. P. Groenewald, A. H. van Zyl, P. A. Verhoef, J. L. Helberg and W. Kempen. This translation
1106-567: Is a Southern Bantu language of the Nguni branch spoken and indigenous to Southern Africa . It is the language of the Zulu people , with about 13.56 million native speakers, who primarily inhabit the province of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa . The word "KwaZulu-Natal" translates into English as "Home of the Zulu Nation is Natal". Zulu is the most widely spoken home language in South Africa (24% of
1185-599: Is a West Germanic language , spoken in South Africa , Namibia and (to a lesser extent) Botswana , Zambia and Zimbabwe . It evolved from the Dutch vernacular of South Holland ( Hollandic dialect ) spoken by the predominantly Dutch settlers and enslaved population of the Dutch Cape Colony , where it gradually began to develop distinguishing characteristics in the 17th and 18th centuries. Although Afrikaans has adopted words from other languages, including German and
1264-399: Is a contraction of an earlier ilithambo /ílítʰámbó/ , which may still be used by some speakers. Likewise, uphahla /úːpʰaɬa/ "roof" is a contraction of the earlier uluphahla /ulúpʰaɬa/ . In addition, the vowel of the penultimate syllable is allophonically lengthened phrase- or sentence-finally. The use of click consonants is one of the most distinctive features of Zulu. This feature
1343-601: Is a groundswell movement within Afrikaans to be inclusive, and to promote itself along with the indigenous official languages. In Namibia, the percentage of Afrikaans speakers declined from 11.4% (2001 Census) to 10.4% (2011 Census). The major concentrations are in Hardap (41.0%), ǁKaras (36.1%), Erongo (20.5%), Khomas (18.5%), Omaheke (10.0%), Otjozondjupa (9.4%), Kunene (4.2%), and Oshikoto (2.3%). Some native speakers of Bantu languages and English also speak Afrikaans as
1422-465: Is a sequence of high-low and occurs only on long vowels. The penultimate syllable can also bear a falling tone when it is long due to the word's position in the phrase. However, when it shortens, the falling tone becomes disallowed in that position. In principle, every morpheme has an inherent underlying tone pattern which does not change regardless of where it appears in a word. However, like most other Bantu languages, Zulu has word tone , meaning that
1501-876: Is a table with some words constructed from the roots - Zulu and -ntu (the root for person/people ): The following is a list of phrases that can be used when one visits a region whose primary language is Zulu: The following is from the preamble to the Constitution of South Africa : Thina, bantu baseNingizimu Afrika, Siyakukhumbula ukucekelwa phansi kwamalungelo okwenzeka eminyakeni eyadlula; Sibungaza labo abahluphekela ubulungiswa nenkululeko kulo mhlaba wethu; Sihlonipha labo abasebenzela ukwakha nokuthuthukisa izwe lethu; futhi Sikholelwa ekutheni iNingizimu Afrika ingeyabo bonke abahlala kuyo, sibumbene nakuba singafani. Afrikaans Afrikaans ( / ˌ æ f r ɪ ˈ k ɑː n s / AF -rih- KAHNSS , / ˌ ɑː f -, - ˈ k ɑː n z / AHF -, - KAHNZ )
1580-512: Is absent from the other West Germanic standard languages. For example: Both French and San origins have been suggested for double negation in Afrikaans. While double negation is still found in Low Franconian dialects in West Flanders and in some "isolated" villages in the centre of the Netherlands (such as Garderen ), it takes a different form, which is not found in Afrikaans. The following
1659-469: Is an example: Compare with Ek wil dit nie doen nie , which changes the meaning to 'I want not to do this'. Whereas Ek wil nie dit doen nie emphasizes a lack of desire to act, Ek wil dit nie doen nie emphasizes the act itself. The -ne was the Middle Dutch way to negate but it has been suggested that since -ne became highly non-voiced, nie or niet was needed to complement
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#17330845300081738-602: Is mostly predictable and normally falls on the penultimate syllable of a word. It is accompanied by an allophonic lengthening of the vowel. When the final vowel of a word is long due to contraction, it receives the stress instead of the preceding syllable. Lengthening does not occur on all words in a sentence, however, but only those that are sentence- or phrase-final. Thus, for any word of at least two syllables, there are two different forms, one with penultimate length and one without it, occurring in complementary distribution. In some cases, there are morphemic alternations that occur as
1817-555: Is neither a creole nor a direct descendant of Dutch, but a fusion of two transmission pathways. Most of the first settlers whose descendants today are the Afrikaners were from the United Provinces (now Netherlands), with up to one-sixth of the community of French Huguenot origin, and a seventh from Germany. African and Asian workers, Cape Coloured children of European settlers and Khoikhoi women, and slaves contributed to
1896-418: Is often not understood by young people. The vowel system of Zulu consists of five vowels. /ɛ/ and /ɔ/ are pronounced [ e ] and [ o ], respectively, if the following syllable contains the [+ ATR ] vowels /i/ or /u/ . They are [ɛ] and [ɔ] otherwise: There is limited vowel length in Zulu, as a result of the contraction of certain syllables. For example, the word ithambo /íːtʰámbó/ "bone",
1975-528: Is seen as the dawn of a new era in Afrikaans cinema. Several short films have been created and more feature-length movies, such as Poena Is Koning and Bakgat (both in 2008) have been produced, besides the 2011 Afrikaans-language film Skoonheid , which was the first Afrikaans film to screen at the Cannes Film Festival . The film Platteland was also released in 2011. The Afrikaans film industry started gaining international recognition via
2054-496: Is shared with several other languages of Southern Africa, but it is very rare in other regions. There are three basic articulations of clicks in Zulu: Each articulation covers five click consonants, with differences such as being slack-voiced, aspirated or nasalised , for a total of 15. Zulu syllables are canonically (N)C(w)V , and words must always end in a vowel. Consonant clusters consist of any consonant, optionally preceded by
2133-442: Is taught in schools, also called "deep Zulu" ( isiZulu esijulile ), differs in various respects from the language spoken by people living in cities (Urban Zulu, isiZulu sasedolobheni ). Standard Zulu tends to be purist , using derivations from Zulu words for new concepts, whereas speakers of Urban Zulu use loan words abundantly, mainly from English. For example: This situation has led to problems in education because standard Zulu
2212-422: Is thus still lower in pitch than both of the adjacent syllables. Depressor consonants have an effect called tone displacement . Tone displacement occurs whenever a depressor occurs with a high tone, and causes the tone on the syllable to shift rightward onto the next syllable. If the next syllable is long, it gets a falling tone, otherwise a regular high tone. If the penultimate syllable becomes high (not falling),
2291-405: The -ne . With time the -ne disappeared in most Dutch dialects. The double negative construction has been fully grammaticalised in standard Afrikaans and its proper use follows a set of fairly complex rules as the examples below show: A notable exception to this is the use of the negating grammar form that coincides with negating the English present participle . In this case there is only
2370-588: The Evangelie volgens Markus ( Gospel of Mark , lit. 'Gospel according to Mark'); however, this translation was never published. The manuscript is to be found in the South African National Library, Cape Town. The first official translation of the entire Bible into Afrikaans was in 1933 by J. D. du Toit , E. E. van Rooyen, J. D. Kestell, H. C. M. Fourie, and BB Keet . This monumental work established Afrikaans as 'n suiwer en ordentlike taal , that
2449-678: The Arabic alphabet : see Arabic Afrikaans . Later, Afrikaans, now written with the Latin script , started to appear in newspapers and political and religious works in around 1850 (alongside the already established Dutch). In 1875 a group of Afrikaans-speakers from the Cape formed the Genootskap vir Regte Afrikaaners ('Society for Real Afrikaners'), and published a number of books in Afrikaans including grammars, dictionaries, religious materials and histories. Until
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2528-530: The Khoisan languages , an estimated 90 to 95% of the vocabulary of Afrikaans is of Dutch origin. Differences between Afrikaans and Dutch often lie in the more analytic morphology and grammar of Afrikaans, and different spellings. There is a large degree of mutual intelligibility between the two languages, especially in written form . The name of the language comes directly from the Dutch word Afrikaansch (now spelled Afrikaans ) meaning 'African'. It
2607-670: The Northern Ndebele language ( isiNdebele ) is closely related to Zulu. Xhosa , the predominant language in the Eastern Cape , is often considered mutually intelligible with Zulu, as is Northern Ndebele . Maho (2009) lists four dialects: central KwaZulu-Natal Zulu, northern Transvaal Zulu, eastern coastal Qwabe, and western coastal Cele. The Zulu, like Xhosa and other Nguni people , have lived in South Africa for hundreds of years. The Zulu language possesses several click sounds typical of Southern African languages, not found in
2686-716: The Roman Catholic and Anglican Churches, were involved. Afrikaans descended from Dutch dialects in the 17th century. It belongs to a West Germanic sub-group, the Low Franconian languages . Other West Germanic languages related to Afrikaans are German, English, the Frisian languages , Yiddish , and the unstandardised language Low German . Afrikaans is also widely spoken in Namibia. Before independence, Afrikaans had equal status with German as an official language. Since independence in 1990, Afrikaans has had constitutional recognition as
2765-576: The Senate , in which the Afrikaans language was declared a variety of Dutch. The Constitution of 1961 reversed the position of Afrikaans and Dutch, so that English and Afrikaans were the official languages, and Afrikaans was deemed to include Dutch. The Constitution of 1983 removed any mention of Dutch altogether. The Afrikaans Language Monument is on a hill overlooking Paarl in the Western Cape Province . Officially opened on 10 October 1975, it
2844-528: The Synod of Dordrecht of 1618 and was thus in an archaic form of Dutch. This was hard for Dutch speakers to understand, and increasingly unintelligible for Afrikaans speakers. C. P. Hoogehout, Arnoldus Pannevis [ af ] , and Stephanus Jacobus du Toit were the first Afrikaans Bible translators. Important landmarks in the translation of the Scriptures were in 1878 with C. P. Hoogehout's translation of
2923-553: The constitution of the Western Cape , which went into effect in 1998, declares Afrikaans to be an official language of the province alongside English and Xhosa . The Afrikaans-language general-interest family magazine Huisgenoot has the largest readership of any magazine in the country. When the British design magazine Wallpaper described Afrikaans as "one of the world's ugliest languages" in its September 2005 article about
3002-519: The monument , South African billionaire Johann Rupert (chairman of the Richemont Group ), responded by withdrawing advertising for brands such as Cartier , Van Cleef & Arpels , Montblanc and Alfred Dunhill from the magazine. The author of the article, Bronwyn Davies, was an English -speaking South African. An estimated 90 to 95 percent of the Afrikaans lexicon is ultimately of Dutch origin, and there are few lexical differences between
3081-452: The "language of the white oppressor" by some, pressure has been increased to remove Afrikaans as a teaching language in South African universities, resulting in bloody student protests in 2015. Under South Africa's Constitution of 1996, Afrikaans remains an official language , and has equal status to English and nine other languages. The new policy means that the use of Afrikaans is now often reduced in favour of English, or to accommodate
3160-416: The "teacher" meaning. In principle, every syllable can be pronounced with either a high or a low tone. However, low tone does not behave the same as the other two, as high tones can "spread" into low-toned syllables while the reverse does not occur. A low tone is therefore better described as the absence of any toneme; it is a kind of default tone that is overridden by high or falling tones. The falling tone
3239-661: The Arabic script. In 1861, L.H. Meurant published his Zamenspraak tusschen Klaas Waarzegger en Jan Twyfelaar ( Conversation between Nicholas Truthsayer and John Doubter ), which is considered to be the first book published in Afrikaans. The first grammar book was published in 1876; a bilingual dictionary was later published in 1902. The main modern Afrikaans dictionary in use is the Verklarende Handwoordeboek van die Afrikaanse Taal (HAT). A new authoritative dictionary, called Woordeboek van die Afrikaanse Taal (WAT),
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3318-730: The Boers and their servants." In 1925 Afrikaans was recognised by the South African government as a distinct language, rather than simply a vernacular of Dutch. On 8 May 1925, that is 23 years after the Second Boer War ended, the Official Languages of the Union Act, 1925 was passed—mostly due to the efforts of the Afrikaans-language movement —at a joint sitting of the House of Assembly and
3397-507: The Dutch Cape Colony between 1652 and 1672 had a Dutch father. Sarah Grey Thomason and Terrence Kaufman argue that Afrikaans' development as a separate language was "heavily conditioned by nonwhites who learned Dutch imperfectly as a second language." Beginning in about 1815, Afrikaans started to replace Malay as the language of instruction in Muslim schools in South Africa, written with
3476-447: The challenges of demotion and emigration that it faces in South Africa, the Afrikaans vernacular remains competitive, being popular in DSTV pay channels and several internet sites, while generating high newspaper and music CD sales. A resurgence in Afrikaans popular music since the late 1990s has invigorated the language, especially among a younger generation of South Africans. A recent trend is
3555-811: The course of the 18th century. As early as the mid-18th century and as recently as the mid-20th century, Afrikaans was known in standard Dutch as a 'kitchen language' (Dutch: kombuistaal ), lacking the prestige accorded, for example, even by the educational system in Africa, to languages spoken outside Africa. Other early epithets setting apart Kaaps Hollands (' Cape Dutch ', i.e. Afrikaans) as putatively beneath official Dutch standards included geradbraakt , gebroken and onbeschaafd Hollands ('mutilated, broken, or uncivilised Dutch'), as well as verkeerd Nederlands ('incorrect Dutch'). Historical linguist Hans den Besten theorises that modern Standard Afrikaans derives from two sources: So Afrikaans, in his view,
3634-504: The development of Afrikaans. The slave population was made up of people from East Africa, West Africa, Mughal India , Madagascar , and the Dutch East Indies (modern Indonesia). A number were also indigenous Khoisan people, who were valued as interpreters, domestic servants, and labourers. Many free and enslaved women married or cohabited with the male Dutch settlers. M. F. Valkhoff argued that 75% of children born to female slaves in
3713-455: The early 20th century Afrikaans was considered a Dutch dialect , alongside Standard Dutch , which it eventually replaced as an official language. Before the Boer wars , "and indeed for some time afterwards, Afrikaans was regarded as inappropriate for educated discourse. Rather, Afrikaans was described derogatorily as 'a kitchen language' or 'a bastard jargon', suitable for communication mainly between
3792-422: The final syllable dissimilates and becomes low if it was not already. Tone displacement is blocked under the following conditions: Whenever tone displacement is blocked, this results in a depressor syllable with a high tone, which will have the low-tone onset as described above. When the following syllable already has a high or falling tone, the tone disappears from the syllable as if it had been shifted away, but
3871-451: The first full-length feature film in Zulu, Yesterday , was nominated for an Oscar . The mutual intelligibility of many Nguni languages has increased the likelihood of Zulu becoming the lingua franca of the eastern half of the country. In the 1994 film The Lion King , in the " Circle of Life " song, the phrases Ingonyama nengw' enamabala (English: A lion and a leopard spots ), Nans' ingonyama bakithi Baba (English: Here comes
3950-780: The following consonant, although the difference between homorganic nonsyllabic /mC/ and syllabic /m̩C/ is distinctive, e.g. umpetshisi /um̩pétʃiːsi/ "peach tree" (5 syllables) versus impoko /ímpoːɠo/ "grass flower" (3 syllables). Moreover, sequences of syllabic m and homorganic m can occur, e.g. ummbila /úm̩mbíːla/ "maize" (4 syllables). Recent loanwords from languages such as English may violate these constraints, by including additional consonant clusters that are not native to Zulu, such as in igremu /iːgreːmu/ " gram ". There may be some variation between speakers as to whether clusters are broken up by an epenthetic vowel or not, e.g. ikhompiyutha /iːkʰompijuːtʰa/ or ikhompyutha /iːkʰompjuːtʰa/ "computer". Stress in Zulu words
4029-441: The following syllable's tone is not modified. Some examples: Palatalization is a change that affects labial and alveolar consonants whenever they are immediately followed by /j/ . While palatalization occurred historically, it is still productive and occurs as a result of the addition of suffixes beginning with /j/ . A frequent example is the diminutive suffix -yana . Moreover, Zulu does not generally tolerate sequences of
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#17330845300084108-473: The government for Afrikaans, in terms of education, social events, media (TV and radio), and general status throughout the country, given that it now shares its place as official language with ten other languages. Nevertheless, Afrikaans remains more prevalent in the media – radio, newspapers and television – than any of the other official languages, except English. More than 300 book titles in Afrikaans are published annually. South African census figures suggest
4187-406: The increased availability of pre-school educational CDs and DVDs. Such media also prove popular with the extensive Afrikaans-speaking emigrant communities who seek to retain language proficiency in a household context. Afrikaans-language cinema showed signs of new vigour in the early 21st century. The 2007 film Ouma se slim kind , the first full-length Afrikaans movie since Paljas in 1998,
4266-529: The language distance for Anglophones once remarked that the differences between (Standard) Dutch and Afrikaans are comparable to those between the Received Pronunciation and Southern American English . Afrikaans is an official language of the Republic of South Africa and a recognised national language of the Republic of Namibia. Post-apartheid South Africa has seen a loss of preferential treatment by
4345-576: The language of instruction for half the subjects taught in non-White schools (with English continuing for the other half). Although English is the mother tongue of only 8.2% of the population, it is the language most widely understood, and the second language of a majority of South Africans. Afrikaans is more widely spoken than English in the Northern and Western Cape provinces, several hundred kilometres from Soweto. The Black community's opposition to Afrikaans and preference for continuing English instruction
4424-452: The latter is the class 9 noun prefix in- , which ends in a homorganic nasal. Prenasalisation triggers several changes in the following consonant, some of which are phonemic and others allophonic. The changes can be summed as follows: Zulu has tonic assimilation : high tones tend to spread allophonically to following low-tone syllables, raising their pitch to a level just below that of adjacent high-tone syllables. A toneless syllable between
4503-415: The latter without the h . Nouns are written with their prefixes as one orthographical word. If the prefix ends with a vowel (as most do) and the noun stem also begins with a vowel, a hyphen is inserted in between, e.g. i-Afrika . This occurs only with loanwords. Here are some of the main features of Zulu: The root can be combined with several prefixes and thus create other words. For example, here
4582-513: The likes of big Afrikaans Hollywood film stars, like Charlize Theron ( Monster ) and Sharlto Copley ( District 9 ) promoting their mother tongue. SABC 3 announced early in 2009 that it would increase Afrikaans programming due to the "growing Afrikaans-language market and [their] need for working capital as Afrikaans advertising is the only advertising that sells in the current South African television market". In April 2009, SABC3 started screening several Afrikaans-language programmes. There
4661-530: The majority are of Afrikaans-speaking Afrikaner and Coloured South-African descent. A much smaller and unknown number of speakers also reside in the Dutch Caribbean . Contrary to popular belief, the majority of Afrikaans speakers today are not Afrikaners or Boers , but Coloureds . In 1976, secondary-school pupils in Soweto began a rebellion in response to the government's decision that Afrikaans be used as
4740-514: The other official languages. In 1996, for example, the South African Broadcasting Corporation reduced the amount of television airtime in Afrikaans, while South African Airways dropped its Afrikaans name Suid-Afrikaanse Lugdiens from its livery . Similarly, South Africa's diplomatic missions overseas now display the name of the country only in English and their host country's language, and not in Afrikaans. Meanwhile,
4819-410: The other way round. Mutual intelligibility thus tends to be asymmetrical, as it is easier for Dutch speakers to understand Afrikaans than for Afrikaans speakers to understand Dutch. In general, mutual intelligibility between Dutch and Afrikaans is far better than between Dutch and Frisian or between Danish and Swedish . The South African poet writer Breyten Breytenbach , attempting to visualise
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#17330845300084898-411: The past tense is also often replaced with the perfect.) When telling a longer story, Afrikaans speakers usually avoid the perfect and simply use the present tense, or historical present tense instead (as is possible, but less common, in English as well). A particular feature of Afrikaans is its use of the double negative ; it is classified in Afrikaans as ontkennende vorm and is something that
4977-530: The pattern of tones acts more like a template to assign tones to individual syllables, rather than a direct representation of the pronounced tones themselves. Consequently, the relationship between underlying tone patterns and the tones that are pronounced can be quite complex. Underlying high tones tend to surface rightward from the syllables where they are underlyingly present, especially in longer words. The breathy consonant phonemes in Zulu are depressor consonants or depressors for short. Depressor consonants have
5056-552: The population), and it is understood by over 50% of its population. It became one of South Africa's 12 official languages in 1994. According to Ethnologue , it is the second-most widely spoken of the Bantu languages , after Swahili . Like many other Bantu languages, it is written with the Latin alphabet . In South African English , the language is often referred to in its native form, isiZulu . Zulu migrant populations have taken it to adjacent regions, especially Zimbabwe , where
5135-471: The preceding syllable, resulting in a falling tone contour. For example, the English word spoon was borrowed into Zulu as isipunu , phonemically /ísipúnu/ . The second syllable si assimilates to the surrounding high tones, raising its pitch, so that it is pronounced [ísípʼúːnù] sentence-finally. If tone pitch is indicated with numbers, with 1 highest and 9 lowest pitch, then the pitches of each syllable can be denoted as 2-4-3-9. The second syllable
5214-439: The regular pattern. Like almost all other Bantu and other African languages , Zulu is tonal . There are three main tonemes : low, high and falling. Zulu is conventionally written without any indication of tone, but tone can be distinctive in Zulu. For example, the words "priest" and "teacher" are both spelt umfundisi , but they are pronounced with different tones: /úm̩fúndisi/ for the "priest" meaning, and /úm̩fundísi/ for
5293-594: The rest of Africa. The Nguni people have coexisted with other Southern tribes like the San and Khoi. Zulu, like most indigenous Southern African languages, was not a written language until the arrival of missionaries from Europe, who documented the language using the Latin script . The first grammar book of the Zulu language was published in Norway in 1850 by the Norwegian missionary Hans Schreuder . The first written document in Zulu
5372-442: The subject. For example, Only a handful of Afrikaans verbs have a preterite , namely the auxiliary wees ('to be'), the modal verbs , and the verb dink ('to think'). The preterite of mag ('may') is rare in contemporary Afrikaans. All other verbs use the perfect tense, het + past participle (ge-), for the past. Therefore, there is no distinction in Afrikaans between I drank and I have drunk . (In colloquial German,
5451-537: The two languages. Afrikaans has a considerably more regular morphology, grammar, and spelling. There is a high degree of mutual intelligibility between the two languages, particularly in written form. Afrikaans acquired some lexical and syntactical borrowings from other languages such as Malay , Khoisan languages , Portuguese, and Bantu languages , and Afrikaans has also been significantly influenced by South African English . Dutch speakers are confronted with fewer non-cognates when listening to Afrikaans than
5530-729: Was a Bible translation that appeared in 1883. In 1901, John Dube (1871–1946), a Zulu from Natal, created the Ohlange Institute, the first native educational institution in South Africa. He was also the author of Insila kaShaka , the first novel written in Zulu (1930). Another pioneering Zulu writer was Reginald Dhlomo , author of several historical novels of the 19th-century leaders of the Zulu nation: U-Dingane (1936), U-Shaka (1937), U-Mpande (1938), U-Cetshwayo (1952) and U-Dinizulu (1968). Other notable contributors to Zulu literature include Benedict Wallet Vilakazi and, more recently, Oswald Mbuyiseni Mtshali . The written form of Zulu
5609-595: Was controlled by the Zulu Language Board of KwaZulu-Natal . This board has now been disbanded and superseded by the Pan South African Language Board which promotes the use of all eleven official languages of South Africa. English, Dutch and later Afrikaans had been the only official languages used by all South African governments before 1994. However, in the Kwazulu bantustan , the Zulu language
5688-574: Was erected on the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Society of Real Afrikaners , and the 50th anniversary of Afrikaans being declared an official language of South Africa in distinction to Dutch. The earliest Afrikaans texts were some doggerel verse from 1795 and a dialogue transcribed by a Dutch traveller in 1825. Afrikaans used the Latin alphabet around this time, although the Cape Muslim community used
5767-559: Was influenced by Eugene Nida 's theory of dynamic equivalence which focused on finding the nearest equivalent in the receptor language to the idea that the Greek, Hebrew or Aramaic wanted to convey. A new translation, Die Bybel: 'n Direkte Vertaling was released in November 2020. It is the first truly ecumenical translation of the Bible in Afrikaans as translators from various churches, including
5846-399: Was previously referred to as 'Cape Dutch' ( Kaap-Hollands or Kaap-Nederlands ), a term also used to refer to the early Cape settlers collectively, or the derogatory 'kitchen Dutch' ( kombuistaal ) from its use by slaves of colonial settlers "in the kitchen". The Afrikaans language arose in the Dutch Cape Colony , through a gradual divergence from European Dutch dialects , during
5925-649: Was the translation of the whole Bible into Afrikaans. While significant advances had been made in the textual criticism of the Bible, especially the Greek New Testament , the 1933 translation followed the Textus Receptus and was closely akin to the Statenbijbel . Before this, most Cape Dutch-Afrikaans speakers had to rely on the Dutch Statenbijbel . This Statenvertaling had its origins with
6004-515: Was to indicate the implosive /ɓ/ using the special letter ɓ , while the digraph bh would then be simply written as b . Some references may also write h after letters to indicate that they are of the depressor variety, e.g. mh , nh , yh , a practice that is standard in Xhosa orthography. Very early texts, from the early 20th century or before, tend to omit the distinction between plain and aspirated voiceless consonants, writing
6083-531: Was under development As of 2018. The official orthography of Afrikaans is the Afrikaanse Woordelys en Spelreëls , compiled by Die Taalkommissie . The Afrikaners primarily were Protestants, of the Dutch Reformed Church of the 17th century. Their religious practices were later influenced in South Africa by British ministries during the 1800s. A landmark in the development of the language
6162-622: Was underlined when the government rescinded the policy one month after the uprising: 96% of Black schools chose English (over Afrikaans or native languages) as the language of instruction. Afrikaans-medium schools were also accused of using language policy to deter Black African parents. Some of these parents, in part supported by provincial departments of education, initiated litigation which enabled enrolment with English as language of instruction. By 2006 there were 300 single-medium Afrikaans schools, compared to 2,500 in 1994, after most converted to dual-medium education. Due to Afrikaans being viewed as
6241-585: Was widely used. All education in the country at the high school level was in English or Afrikaans. Since the fall of apartheid in 1994, Zulu has been enjoying a marked revival. Zulu-language television was introduced by the SABC in the early 1980s and it broadcasts news and many shows in Zulu. Zulu radio is very popular and newspapers such as isoLezwe , Ilanga and UmAfrika in the Zulu language are available in Kwazulu-Natal province and Johannesburg . In January 2005
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