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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.
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.
Within a subset of Southern Bantu, the label "Nguni" is used both genetically (in the linguistic sense) and typologically (quite apart from any historical significance).. The Nguni languages are closely related, and in many instances different languages are mutually intelligible; in this way, Nguni languages might better be construed as a dialect continuum than as a cluster of separate languages.
It is also known by Pedi or Sepedi and holds the status of an official language in South Africa. [5] [6] An official language for the Lebowa homeland during apartheid, it is the first language of over 4.6 million (9.1%) people according to the South African National Census of 2011, making it the 5th most spoken language in South Africa.
The Pedi / p ɛ d i / or Bapedi / b æ ˈ p ɛ d i / - also known as the Northern Sotho, [2] Basotho ba Lebowa, bakgatla ba dithebe, [3] Transvaal Sotho, [4] Marota, or Dikgoshi [5] - are a Sotho-Tswana ethnic group native to South Africa, Botswana, and Lesotho that speak Pedi or Sepedi, [6] which is one of the 12 official languages in South Africa. [7]
In SAE it is primarily used for publicising the differences between British and other forms of tongue speaking for native speakers in various communities of South Africa. [6] The local native language of Black South African "new" English would lean more on the syllable side and would lean less on stress timing; due to this, the speech of the ...
South Africa's unique social and political history has generated a rich variety of literatures, with themes spanning pre-colonial life, the days of apartheid, and the lives of people in the "new South Africa". Many of the first black South African print authors were missionary-educated, and many wrote in either English or Afrikaans.
Bilingual sign in Afrikaans and Transvaal Ndebele at the Pretoria Art Museum. isiNdebele (English: / ɛ n d ə ˈ b iː l iː /), also known as Southern Ndebele [1] [4] [5] is an African language belonging to the Mbo group of Bantu languages, spoken by the Ndebele people of South Africa.