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The charts below show the way in which the IPA is used to transcribe the Nguni languages Swazi, Xhosa, and Zulu.For a guide to adding IPA characters to Wikipedia articles, see Template:IPA and Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Pronunciation § Entering IPA characters.
English missionary Henry Hare Dugmore helped translate the Bible into Xhosa in 1859 Nelson Mandela was a Xhosa and was a member of the royal family of the Thembu tribe. Xhosa-speaking people have inhabited coastal regions of southeastern Africa since before the 16th century. They refer to themselves as the amaXhosa and their language as isiXhosa.
jova – injection, to inject (from Zulu) kwedini - a popular word meaning a boy in Xhosa and Zulu; laduma! – a popular cheer at soccer matches, "he scores!" (literally: "it thunders", in Nguni) nca – meaning something is nice or tasty (the nc is a nasalised dental click)
Xhosa is spoken by about 18% of the South African population, and has some mutual intelligibility with Zulu, especially Zulu spoken in urban areas. Many Xhosa speakers, particularly those living in urban areas, also speak Zulu and/or Afrikaans and/or English. [11]
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.
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.
Zulu (/ ˈ z uː l uː / ZOO-loo), or isiZulu as an endonym, is a Southern Bantu language of the Nguni branch spoken in, 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. [3]
The lyrics employ the five most widely spoken of South Africa's twelve official languages – Xhosa (first stanza, first two lines), Zulu (first stanza, last two lines), Sesotho (second stanza), Afrikaans (third stanza), and English (final stanza). The lyrics are sung in these languages regardless of the native language of the singer.