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Khoisan (/ ˈ k ɔɪ s ɑː n / KOY-sahn) or Khoe-Sān (pronounced [kxʰoesaːn]) is a catch-all term for the indigenous peoples of Southern Africa who traditionally speak non-Bantu languages, combining the Khoekhoen and the Sān peoples.
Venḓa or Tshivenḓa is a Bantu language and an official language of South Africa and Zimbabwe. It is mainly spoken by the Venda people (or Vhavenḓa) in the northern part of South Africa's Limpopo province, as well as by some Lemba people in South Africa. The Tshivenda language is related to the Kalanga language which is spoken in Southern ...
Other major Bantu languages include Lingala with more than 20 million speakers (Congo, DRC), followed by Zulu with 13.56 million speakers (South Africa), Xhosa at a distant third place with 8.2 million speakers (South Africa and Zimbabwe), and Shona with less than 10 million speakers (if Manyika and Ndau are included), while Sotho-Tswana ...
Map of South Africa showing the primary Xhosa language speech area in green. Xhosa is an agglutinative tonal language categorized under Bantu linguistic classification. While the Xhosas call their language "isiXhosa", it is usually referred to as "Xhosa" in English. Written Xhosa uses a Latin alphabet–based system.
At least thirty-five languages are spoken in South Africa, twelve of which are official languages of South Africa: Ndebele, Pedi, Sotho, South African Sign Language, Swazi, Tsonga, Tswana, Venda, Afrikaans, Xhosa, Zulu, and English, which is the primary language used in parliamentary and state discourse, though all official languages are equal in legal status.
The term San is now standard in South African, and used officially in the blazon of the national coat-of-arms. The "South African San Council" representing San communities in South Africa was established as part of WIMSA in 2001. [27] [28] The term Basarwa (singular Mosarwa) is used for the San collectively in Botswana.
The National Party (South Africa) government, the Apartheid government became the profundity action from the pre-1948 Union of South Africa's government rule, it introduced a series of measures that reshaped the South African society such that Europeans would take themselves as the demographic majority while being a minority group.
The Constitution of South Africa stipulates that all South Africans have a right to identify with their own language, and points out that tribal affiliations or "ethnicity" is identifiable mostly through a common language; hence the recognition of groups such as, for example the Xhosas who are united by isiXhosa; Zulus who are united by isiZulu ...