At the moment, South Africa has eleven official languages. Which is a lot. However, part of that drive to be all inclusive stems from the legacy of apartheid (and the subsequent let's do away with all the bullshit of apartheid that followed). In the time from 1984 to 1994 South Africa only had two official languages: English and Afrikaans (and before that it was just Dutch not Afrikaans, big whoop). Not exactly fair to the indigenous people who lived here and had incredibly diverse and interesting languages in many separate tribal groups, but hey that's apartheid for you. Luckily the new constitution of South Africa has endeavored to preserve and also promote the importance of indigenous languages.
In 1994, South Africa decided to embrace eleven languages because that was an accurate representation of their eclectic population - less than 2% of South Africans have a first language other than the official eleven. That makes this rainbow nation's vernacular a mix of: English, Afrikaans, isiXhosa (Xhosa), isiZulu (Zulu), Setswana (Tswana), Sepedi (Northern Sotho), Sesotho (Southern Sotho), Xitsonga (Tsonga), Siswati (Swati/Swazi), Tshivenda (Venda), and isiNdebele (Southern Ndebele). For those Americans who just failed at pronouncing each and every one of those names, the English equivalent is in the parentheses [ex. Español (Spanish)], though I doubt many of you are even getting those out of your mouth in more than a jumbled mess (hint: the X in Xhosa is a click and Sotho is pronounced su tu).
This list includes two west Germanic languages (English and Afrikaans - yeah yeah the boring stuff) thanks to the British and Dutch settlers/colonizers/etc. as well as nine Bantu languages. Now I know people educated in the good old US of A lost me at Bantu since not a soul in any of the 50 states has ever heard of anything other than romance languages and Mandarin so let me just quickly explain just how incredibly widespread and important this group of languages is.
Depending on how you distinguish between dialect and separate language, there are either as few as 250 or as many as 535 Bantu (meaning 'people') languages, and their region extends south and east from Cameroon - encompassing Southern, Central and East Africa. As a point of comparison, there are seven West Germanic languages. Seven.
So, if I were to talk extensively about Bantu languages I'd have a PhD and this post would be five thousand pages long, so instead I am going to focus on several of the languages I have run into in my travels, as well as a few phrases you may recognize that English has borrowed (without citation, of course).
Some of the more amusing English words of Bantu origin are:
-Bongo/Conga
-Boogie-woogie (a corruption of the phrase Mbuki-Mvuki. Mbuki means to take off in flight and Mvuki means to dance so wildly you shake off your clothes)
-Simba (Disney got really creative with this one - it's Swahili for 'lion')
-Safari (Swahili for 'journey')
-Hakuna matata (literally it's Swahili for no worries - similarly, in Setswana it's Hahuna matata)
-Samba (semba is 'a blow struck with the belly button' in Kikonga), Rumba ('party'), Marimba (Bantu word for 'xylophone') and Mambo (Swahili for 'thing')
-Chimpanzee (I'm not explaining this)
-Gumbo (the cajun dish is derived from a Bantu word for 'okra')
-Goobers (the name of the chocolate is from n'guba meaning 'peanut')
-Jenga (the game is named for the Swahili word 'to build')
-Jumbo (was the name of a famous massive elephant in P.T. Barnum's circus - originally the name was a corruption of Swahili's 'jambo' which means hello or 'jembe' meaning chief)
1. isiXhosa, or, as it's more commonly referred, Xhosa. This Bantu language is extremely complex, and while I've often attempted to learn a few words, it's usually a struggle. Why? Xhosa is tonal and a click language. Two extremely difficult things for native English speakers to make their way around, but hopefully since I get a few lessons in with my internship, I'll be able to do some conversational Xhosa within the month.
This language is spoken by around 18% of South Africans as a first language and is heavily concentrated in the Eastern Cape. However, Xhosa is a Nguni language (one of the branches of the Bantu tree) and there is some mutual intelligibility between the other three official Nguni languages in South Africa: Swati, Zulu and isiNdebele. It is the most widely distributed language in South Africa, though not the most common (that's Zulu).
Xhosa's clicks are usually an interesting feature for many Westerners, though these sounds aren't a Bantu characteristic, they are borrowed (and then integrated) from the Khoisan, which is a linguistically distinct ethnic group that has inhabited southern Africa for quite some time. They are most commonly referred to as Bushmen, and we've talked about them quite a bit in previous posts. It's estimated that 15% of Xhosa is of Khoisan origin, and modern Xhosa incorporates both English and Afrikaans words as well.
There are 18 distinct clicks in Xhosa (only 15 of which are used in Zulu), of which there are three different types. The three are classified by where you place your tongue in your mouth when making the click. The front teeth (dental) click (as if you were tsk tsking at someone) is represented by the letter c. The lateral click (the sound you make when you cluck at a horse) is written as x and the alveolar (usually the hardest for English speakers to replicate) clicks are designated q. The alveolar clicks are made with the tongue on the roof of the mouth and it should sound similar to popping the cork of a wine bottle. There are six different types of each of these clicks to make up the eighteen total. Also, factor in that many of these sounds are in the middle of a word and blended seamlessly in with the other vowels and consonants. Yeah, its a very difficult language.
"Thank you" in Xhosa is Ndiyabulela. One of the most common traits of this language and the most obnoxious while learning it is that the words are very long and multisyllabic. It's a chore just to remember one word.
2. is Afrikaans. I generally dislike attempting to speak this language because of the intense guttural g sound that is so common in Dutch but completely absent in English and is more difficult for me than the clicks in Xhosa. However, it's extremely widespread in Western Cape (as it replaced mainly the Khoisan languages) and thus many colored and some black South Africans as well as the white Afrikaaners speak it. In many of the rural colored communities, Afrikaans is the only way to communicate.
Afrikaans is listed as a distinct language from Dutch, although they are heavily similar, as 95% of words are of Dutch origin. However, one interesting departure of Afrikaans is the use of the double negative to actually just mean negative. It has been postulated that this oddity is either of French or San (Bushmen) origin, which I find pretty amusing because those are so completely different it just means they have no idea.
Thank you in Afrikaans is one of the few phrases I can say with ease. It is almost identical to saying "buy a donkey" in English. Baie dankie.
3. is Setswana. This Bantu language is one of the eleven official languages of South Africa, but is also the official language of Botswana. In fact, the first time I ran into this was not in ZA but while we were trekking around the Okavango delta. Thankfully, Setswana is much easier than Xhosa, and quite fun to learn various phrases in, though they also have that obnoxious gutteral g for some reason. Setswana only has three clicks, and they are generally only used by the older generation, falling out of the modern language. If you ask a Setswana speaker if it is a click language, they will most likely say no. Like Xhosa, Setswana is also tonal, though they only have two tones, high and low.
One of my favorite features of this language is the use of -ma and -ra when speaking to women and men, respectively. For example, if you say thank you to a woman, you would say "ke a leboga ma" and to a man "ke a leboga ra" (the g is gutteral and the r in ra is rolled). This just makes it sound like every time a man is speaking to a woman he's calling her ma after every few words. It just reminds me of how Cubans in Miami hit on chicks. Not very subtle?
4. is Shona. Last but not least, this language is the unofficial language of South Africa like Spanish is the unofficial language of the United States. Shona is the official language of Zimbabwe, and, like Mexicans in the USA, they have left the land of Mugabe in droves. Mostly for South Africa. So, while it's not official, it is quite possible that in any major city here you may catch an ear-full or two of Shona.
This language is the most prolific native speakers Bantu language, with an estimated 14.2-15.4 million people (Zulu is second with 10.3 million). While Shona lacks the clicks, they do have plenty strange and interesting features of their language. In Shona, each syllable ends in a vowel and every verb ends in a. They also have two different combinations of consonants (sv, tsv, dzv and zv) that indicate they are whistled. This is a feature of several Southern Bantu languages, though none of them are as widespread as Shona.
Some whistled examples include:
shooting stars = masvosvobwa
to dodge = nzvenga
to sweep = tsvaira
See the theme? Whooosh!
Afrikaans is listed as a distinct language from Dutch, although they are heavily similar, as 95% of words are of Dutch origin. However, one interesting departure of Afrikaans is the use of the double negative to actually just mean negative. It has been postulated that this oddity is either of French or San (Bushmen) origin, which I find pretty amusing because those are so completely different it just means they have no idea.
Thank you in Afrikaans is one of the few phrases I can say with ease. It is almost identical to saying "buy a donkey" in English. Baie dankie.
3. is Setswana. This Bantu language is one of the eleven official languages of South Africa, but is also the official language of Botswana. In fact, the first time I ran into this was not in ZA but while we were trekking around the Okavango delta. Thankfully, Setswana is much easier than Xhosa, and quite fun to learn various phrases in, though they also have that obnoxious gutteral g for some reason. Setswana only has three clicks, and they are generally only used by the older generation, falling out of the modern language. If you ask a Setswana speaker if it is a click language, they will most likely say no. Like Xhosa, Setswana is also tonal, though they only have two tones, high and low.
One of my favorite features of this language is the use of -ma and -ra when speaking to women and men, respectively. For example, if you say thank you to a woman, you would say "ke a leboga ma" and to a man "ke a leboga ra" (the g is gutteral and the r in ra is rolled). This just makes it sound like every time a man is speaking to a woman he's calling her ma after every few words. It just reminds me of how Cubans in Miami hit on chicks. Not very subtle?
4. is Shona. Last but not least, this language is the unofficial language of South Africa like Spanish is the unofficial language of the United States. Shona is the official language of Zimbabwe, and, like Mexicans in the USA, they have left the land of Mugabe in droves. Mostly for South Africa. So, while it's not official, it is quite possible that in any major city here you may catch an ear-full or two of Shona.
This language is the most prolific native speakers Bantu language, with an estimated 14.2-15.4 million people (Zulu is second with 10.3 million). While Shona lacks the clicks, they do have plenty strange and interesting features of their language. In Shona, each syllable ends in a vowel and every verb ends in a. They also have two different combinations of consonants (sv, tsv, dzv and zv) that indicate they are whistled. This is a feature of several Southern Bantu languages, though none of them are as widespread as Shona.
Some whistled examples include:
shooting stars = masvosvobwa
to dodge = nzvenga
to sweep = tsvaira
See the theme? Whooosh!
Hope that has brought some light to the wonderful, understudied and under appreciated world of Southern African languages!
- Rh
- Rh
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