Talk:Xhosa language

"The Click Song" and Xhosa r/rh
On "The Click Song," someone with Makeba's album should double-check the lyrics. I don't hear "bathi" in there at all.

Also, my Xhosa textbook spells igqirha with an rh, but the lyrics here have *igqira. I notice in the table of consonants above, there is an rh and a gr, but no single r. I think the correct spelling must be rh (which is in IPA /x/), not a simple r. Compare with a recording.

--Dupes 20:35, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

are you sure?
Are you sure there's ever an exclamation point there? I think you're confusing Xhosa with the Khoisan languages.

You are absolutely right; Ethnologue mentions many names for Xhosa, none with an exclamation mark. arj 19:55, 19 Feb 2004 (UTC)

"Gender system"
To call this a gender system, to me, is really strange as there is absolutely no correlation with gender. There is also something like 15 classes, none of them with any relation to gender. Many of the classes pair to form singular-plural pairs. My knowledge is about Zulu, but I'm quite sure its the same for Xhosa.

The original meaning of "gender" is "kind, type", and not "sex". I agree it can be confusing, and in languages with more than two or three genders, these are often termed "noun classes" - which the article uses as the primary term. "Genders" in scare quotes should stay, in my opinion, since many non-linguists are not aware of the proper term, nor of the existence of languages with many noun classes. arj 18:43, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I think it's important to show readers that Xhosa noun classes have the same function as French/Spanish/German genders. Also note that one of the Scandinavian languages (I think Danish) has a neuter and a common gender, but neither masculing nor feminine. --Taejo 07:45, 15 July 2005 (UTC)


 * Gender is a standard linguistic term for this. The meaning of 'sex' is recent, and derived from the linguistic term. Danish, Dutch, Swedish and at least one of the |Norwegian languages do not distinguish masculine from feminine nouns. ColinFine 12:49, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

--105.236.253.97 (talk) 19:42, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

Inconsistency
In regard to the sentence "The members of the ethnic group that speaks Xhosa refer to themselves as the amaXhosa and their language is known as isiXhosa." in the second paragraph - and elsewhere. Is the language called Xhosa or isiXhosa? --Eleassar777 16:53, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)


 * They call it isiXhosa, whereas most English speakers call it Xhosa. - Mustafaa 17:40, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * ...and the isi is the noun class prefix of the class that includes names of languages; that's why the native name is isiXhosa, whereas Xhosa, without noun class prefix, is generally used in English. (Check out both Kiswahili and Swahili for another example).  &mdash; mark &#9998; 23:40, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)


 * There is no inconsistency (nor any "incosistency"). All the article is (correctly) saying is that the Xhosa word for the Xhosa language is "isiXhosa", just as one might say the Spanish word for the Spanish language is "Espagnol". Whenever the Xhosa language is referred to in the article, it is called, correctly, Xhosa, because Xhosa is the correct name of the language in English.


 * There is indeed a silly pretension in some quarters to try to impose the vernacular words on to English, thus isiXhosa for Xhosa, isiZulu for Zulu, seTswana for Tswana, tsiVenda for Venda, etc. This is as silly as saying "Huberta's mother-tongue is Gaeilge" when what you mean to say is "Huberta's mother-tongue is Irish" or "Pasha speaks fluent русский язык" when what you mean is "Pasha speaks fluent Russian".


 * &cet.Brockle 12:09, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

The q, c and x letters were chosen to convey the hint that non-native speakers can replace the click with the 'k' sound with little loss in meaning.

This sounds like rubbish: the q, c and x were (I've always assumed) chosen because they have no unique sound in English - i.e. are unnecessary - because they can be replaced with kw, k or s, and ks respectively. Also, to replace them with 'k' not only often loses meaning (and you're unlikely to be understood if you consistently replace all your clicks with 'k') but is offensive ("I can't be bothered to learn the proper name of your language, so I'll call it Koza") --Taejo 07:45, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

Samples?
The IPA isn't very good at conveying the sound of the language---or even, really, how to pronounce Xhosa. Is anyone (or does anyone know) a native speaker and have access to a mic? There doesn't seem to be a place for speech sample requests for esoteric languages. grendel|khan 13:30, August 23, 2005 (UTC) sample of a native speaker pronouncing the word 'Xhosa'
 * found some here https://archive.org/details/XoliswaMatrokkoIbaliXhosa Victor Grigas (talk) 05:17, 5 June 2015 (UTC)



learning xhosa
xhosa is one of the african languages i'm attempting to learn. i've been listening to an xhosa audio course for... i think it's been several years now.

Gringo300 04:15, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

Xhosa pronounciation
As a native speaker of Xhosa (Gcaleka, Bomvana, Rharhabe and Mpondo dialects), I certainly agree that to replace Xhosa clicks with 'k' would simply make no meaning in the language or worst it could create great confusion as to the intended message. One simply has to learn to pronounce the 'q', 'x' and 'c' and the combination of these consonants or at least try to be closer to the real sound. For those looking for help in pronounciation, I suggest to contact several South African universities with Xhosa departments e.g Fort Hare and Rhodes in the Eastern Cape Province or Cape Town and Western Cape in the Western Cape province.

Lastly, the language the amaXhosa speak is referred to as isiXhosa. Only English speakers refer to it as 'Xhosa'. The name of a language is not conjugated in English but of course it also is in a few cases. So to say that "Bathetha isiXhosa" can be directly translated as "They speak the Xhosa language" or "Uthetha isiNgesi" as "She or he speaks the English language" Zintatu, 03 november 2005213.209.160.58 10:05, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

Long vowels

 * Long vowels are phonemic, but are usually not written, except for â.

I've never seen a diacritic in written Xhosa, except in a dictionary (where they indicate tone). Doubling a letter indicates length, but is only ever used in the noun prefixes oo- (class 2a) and ii- (class 10). So I've changed it. --Taejo | Talk 12:15, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

English pronunciation of the name
How is the name "Xhosa" usually pronounced by English speakers? It would be useful to have this detail in the introductory paragraph. Cheers. Ben Arnold 23:27, 24 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Well that depends. In South Africa, English-speakers usually say it (or attempt to!) how native speakers say it, with the click (although without the isi- as has been mentioned). Many older South Africans pronounce it 'koza', but most young English-speakers feel that that is lazy and disrespectful. Joziboy 25 Feb 2006, 11:05 UTC


 * Many English-speakers find it easy enough to pronounce the three principal click sounds, denoted by x, c and q, in isolation, when they are explained or demonstrated by a Xhosa-(or Zulu-)speaker. However, where they often struggle is to incorporate the clicks into a train of speech. There is good reason for this - the clicks are made with a drawing-in of breath, unlike standard consonents, which are exhalatory. Unpractised people generally find it tricky and counter-intuitive to break the generally exhalatory pattern of speaking with an inhalatory click-sound, particularly with a "breathy" language like English. Once the drawing-in nature of the click sounds is understood, people often find it easier to pronounce the clicks within a phrase.


 * &cet.Brockle 12:25, 16 April 2007 (UTC)


 * But the struggle to incorporate new sounds is a struggle or a problem in all languages that we are not accustomed to speaking. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 198.54.202.102 (talk) 18:18, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Star Trek reference
I've removed the following text: "In the fictional Star Trek universe, a freighter is named after the language."

It's a link to an off-site wiki, and not being familiar with the show, it just feels crufty to mention it anywhere in this article, especially the lead paragraph! Graham talk 10:12, 31 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Totally agree; thanks for removing that cruft. &mdash; mark &#9998; 11:49, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

name; phonemes
I never got far with my Xhosa, but my impression was that ngx etc. were prenasalized, not nasalized. Can anyone verify?

kwami 21:01, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

Translator
There is a Xhosa translator which enables you to translate English sentences to Xhosa, Xhosa sentences to English.

Old English to Xhosa translator

English to Xhosa translator

Original Xhosa to English translator

New Xhosa to English translator (which it is under heavy construction)

Regards, --Blake3522 02:52, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

Can anyone please replace the sound sample?
Lots of noise as if an old cassette recorder was used and other stuff not belonging to the actual pronunciation. Or cut the sample (can't edit .ogg here) -andy 84.149.101.243 (talk) 21:38, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

Derogatory terms should include qualifier
Kaffer, Caffre, and Cafre are very derogatory terms, and I would say obsolete ways to refer to the language (having adapted a more general meaning of "black people," and equivalent to the n word in America). I understand if we want the article to include these terms, as historically the word Kaffer was used by European settlers to refer to the language, but there should be a qualifer. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.218.226.243 (talk) 13:47, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

place of articulation
In the second paragragh, I changed "q" to refer to palatal rather than alveloar clicks. This is correctly described in the table under the heading "Consonants", however. Ake Torngren (talk) 13:05, 23 May 2008 (UTC)
 * While I do not know Xhosa well, I believe it is in fact a post-alveolar click and not a palatal. The IPA symbol [!] is the post-alveolar while the palatal is [ǂ].  So either the second paragraph is wrong or the consonantal inventory is.  I will change the second paragraph back post-alveolar. Theoretick (talk) 18:13, 18 March 2012 (UTC)


 * I disagree, and believe it is the lateral click, but I'm unsure. David Spector (talk) 12:52, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

To reference a strange looking old brit who imposed the bible on native peoples alongside Nelson Mandela makes for an odd set of photographic references. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 137.54.2.179 (talk) 14:10, 31 March 2012 (UTC)


 * Might be odd to some, but it's very relevant to the article. David Spector (talk) 12:52, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

Xhosa has [!], not [ǂ]. The names for these vary in the lit, which is where the confusion probably comes in. Currently, phonologists seem to have settled on "(post)alveolar" and "palatal", respectively, but they are problematic because they don't correspond well to the places of pulmonic consonants. — kwami (talk) 21:37, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

WP:SAFRICA assessment
Assessed as C-Class. Falls short of B-Class on a few issues, take a look at the assessment guidelines for ideas on improving the article. Good luck! Ron2K (talk) 20:18, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

John Bennie
Should we not add a section on the work of Missionary John Bennie who played an important role in the development of the writen form of the language.

http://www.fhiser.org.za/Workingpapers/16Opland.pdf "Brownlee was joined in November 1821 by two Scottish missionaries, W.R. Thomson and John Bennie. Bennie set himself to learning Dutch, and then turned to Xhosa, ʻreducing to form and rule this language which hitherto floated in the wind,ʼ as he put it.5 When a printing press arrived at Tyhume with John Ross in December 1823, Bennie was ready with his transcription of the Xhosa language: three days after its arrival, on 19 December 1823, the first sheets of printed Xhosa emerged from the press." as far as this shows, Bennie was the first person to print the Xhosa language and also played a role in the development of the writen language

http://www.kwintessential.co.uk/language/about/isixhosa.html "The Presbyterian missionary John Bennie wrote the first Xhosa vocabulary list in 1824. Bennie’s work set the scene for the establishment of a printing press, which later became known as the Lovedale Press. Through this press isiXhosa had, by the early twentieth century, established the strongest African language literary tradition in the country."

http://www.genealogyworld.net/missionaries/missionaries_b2.html see the section on John Bennie --Scottykira (talk) 13:20, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Minor issue
The 7.9 million people, is linked to Xhosa, I am sure sure (as they say in SA) that that 7.9 is not exclusively Xhosa ethnic group. there must be an easy link to the fact that it is the native language of Xhosa people and in the first line have a link to that article. BUt I have just noticed other language do not follow this convention. except Hebrew Culturally, is it considered by Jews and other religious groups as the language of the Jewish people, --Halqh حَلَقَة הלכהሐላቃህ (talk) 18:54, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

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Speaker distribution
There was a group of Xhosa speakers that settled in Zimbabwe. In fact, Xhosa is even considered an "official" language of Zimbabwe. It would be good to update the distribution map to include this. I don't know whether data is available for Lesotho and Swaziland, but if so, making the map more regional and less country-specific would seem like an improvement. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Wwkudu (talk • contribs) 09:35, 13 March 2018 (UTC)

Phonology of Xhosa
Hello, I have a question regarding the phonological inventory of Xhosa within the Xhosa page. How accurate is the phonological chart that is presented on the Xhosa page? What source is the phonological information from? If the source is not a reliable source, which source is a good one for finding the phonology of the Xhosa language? If there are any experts on the Xhosa language or any people with a reliable source on the language that want to help improve the page, please give me a holler. I would love to be able to improve this page, and help correct the phonology if needed. If anyone has a good source and may be able to correct it themself, that is great too. Thanks Fdomanico51997 (talk) 07:21, 24 May 2018 (UTC)

post democratic...?
isiXhosa is one of the official languages in post democratic South Africa

probably should be 'democratic', not 'post...' Wathiik (talk)

Line in opening about clicks
In the short opening we have this line:

"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]"

While this is a fun curiosity for English speakers, is it really important enough to be one of three lines in the opening? 69.113.166.178 (talk) 22:18, 15 June 2021 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure that exact percentages or the term "functional load" are suitable for the introductory section, but some mention that the language is one of clickiest non-Khoisan languages certainly would be... AnonMoos (talk) 00:22, 17 June 2021 (UTC)


 * Really? It seems to me like that's a "curiosity angle" rather than a key part of an objective overview. Like... that's interesting because English doesn't have clicks and so English speakers are interested in clicks, but surely the goal of the article should be to be more objective than that? We wouldn't have "This language has the most glottal stops" in the lede of a language article, or "this language has the most /e/ sounds", because those things are normal to English speakers and so it isn't a curiosity. 69.113.166.178 (talk) 04:11, 20 June 2021 (UTC)


 * Clicks are confined to southern Africa and certain remnants elsewhere (Hadza / Sandawe). Bantu languages originated from roughly the area of current-day Cameroon, and did not originally have clicks.  So the fact that it is now among the most heavily clickified of originally clickless languages (presumably under Khoisan influence) is certainly of interest to linguists.  It's not just "English speakers" -- all languages native to Europe, North Africa, the Americas, Asia, and Oceania are also lacking clicks... AnonMoos (talk) 23:46, 20 June 2021 (UTC)


 * Did I say it's not of interest to linguists? There are lots of things in every language that are of interest to lots of people. There are lots of things in on every topic covered in Wikipedia that are of interest to lots of people. We want to represent those things in articles, but simply being fit to be in the article is not the same as being fit to be in the opening section. There should be a consistency, across all languages Wikipedia covers, in what goes in the lede. In which historical characteristics, sociological characteristics, and linguistic characteristics form the vital statistics. French has a partially base-20 counting system, which is very unusual. This is covered in the article on French, but it's not in the lede. The (extensive) lede is instead taken up by vital sociological and historical facts, and by its relation to other languages. These are high-level things about French. With Xhosa, we forgo many of those encyclopaedic vital statistics to jump straight to a fun fact for a Western audience. 69.113.166.178 (talk) 06:42, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but clicks are a strongly regionally restricted sound group which you can hear in a language even if you don't understand one single word of the language. Miriam Makeba even sang The Click Song, which got some radio airplay in the United States, and probably some other countries, in the early 1960s... By contrast, you have to know a number of details about the French language before you can understand the quasi-vigesimal thing, and it doesn't even apply in all countries which use French (see huitante, nonante). No-one has written a vigesimal song (or if they did, no one else cared)... AnonMoos (talk) 01:37, 7 July 2021 (UTC)


 * What bearing do any of those things have on what the lede of a language's Wikipedia article should look like? We write ledes based on what songs have said about the languages? 69.113.166.178 (talk) 04:45, 9 July 2021 (UTC)


 * It's a song IN the language, not a song ABOUT the language. Look, I can understand some general skepticism toward Charles Berlitz or Mario Pei style "linguafacts" presented in isolation in a way which sometimes seems more suited to Ripley's Believe-it-or-not than to a competitor to Britannica.  However, clicks are exotic to the whole world outside southern Africa (except the Hadza and Sandawe) -- not just to "Westerners"[sic] -- and the historical transition from a language without any clicks (before the Bantu languages entered southern Africa) to a currently rather clicky language is of great interest to linguists... AnonMoos (talk) 00:15, 10 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Yes, there are lots of things in every language that are of great interest to linguists. Hopefully they all go in the article. How do we decide which of those go in the lede? You'll notice in articles like English, French, German, etc., that there is sort of a common sociohistorical pattern to language article ledes. The message is clear and encyclopaedic. This article's lede, on the other hand, is about *linguistic features that are different from what the imagined reader is used to*. It's about *curiosity*.


 * If you survey good language articles, you will see that the ledes follow this kind of pattern:


 * [Language] is a [language family] language, primarily spoken in [geographic area]. It is official/widely spoken in/by [states, ethnic groups, etc.]. Its closest linguistic relatives are [languages].


 * [A bit about its place on the world stage -- its current global usage. Maybe a sentence, or three paragraphs for french]


 * [A sentence or paragraph about dialects within language]


 * [Occasionally a bit about standard linguistic properties -- cases, verbs, genders -- and the language's historical descent].


 * What they *never* do is "this language is different than what you are used to because of XY spoken property!" That is not encyclopaedic. It is not treating the subject from an attempt at neutrality, evenness. 69.113.166.178 (talk) 17:19, 15 July 2021 (UTC)


 * Xhosa is much less of an international language than French, which was the main world international language in the 18th century (parts of Tolstoy's novel "War and Peace" were written in French, because French was a home language of many Russian aristocrats in the early 19th century!) and has maintained some degree of international presence ever since; so I'm not sure how much there is to say about Xhosa in that respect. As I've already explained several times, clicks differ from the vast majority of other aspects of linguistic typology because they're STRONGLY regionally restricted. so they're exotic to speakers of ALL non-southern-African languages (except Hadza and Sandawe), and also exotic to speakers of some southern African languages as well.  Clicks are simply different from ergative case or whatever -- ergative case languages occur in all major regions of the globe, and when we have historic data available, we can see many languages in various parts of the world losing ergativity or gaining ergativity over time.  Clicks are limited to one small region of planet Earth, and do not spontaneously arise in other regions.  The ONLY way for a non-click language to acquire clicks is for speakers of that language to have direct contacts with speakers of a language which already has clicks -- which is what happened in the case of Xhosa.... AnonMoos (talk) 01:06, 16 July 2021 (UTC)


 * At no point in any of your comments, including this one, have you connected your statements about clicks to the philosophy of ledes. IN all of your comments, you say true things that should be (and are) in the article. At no point in any of my comments have I indicated that these things should not be in the article.


 * My point is that there should be a consistent basis for what goes in the lede of a language article. Continuing to state that clicks are geographically constrained does not, to my mind, address this. 69.113.166.178 (talk) 17:29, 16 July 2021 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure that there can be a rigid straightjacket for entire lead sections (of course there can be a rigid framework for infoboxes in some cases). If Xhosa is the clickiest originally non-click language, then that's something which is unique to it among all languages on the planet -- and it's something which is of interest to real linguists (not just Charles Berlitz and Mario Pei types). AnonMoos (talk) 16:06, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

Pronunciation audio
Can someone please change the pronunciation audio because as a Xhosa person it doesn't sound how I would say it which could be misleading to someone who is not familiar with the language in terms of hearing it instead of reading it. 41.114.232.17 (talk) 07:01, 22 March 2022 (UTC)


 * Good suggestion! I agree that it sounds pretty distinctly non-native. I noticed there's a comment above with a link to an audio; it says the word Xhosa is in the story, but I listened to the whole thing and did not hear it. I will try to make a new recording to use. WmGB (talk) 19:20, 27 July 2022 (UTC)