The Bantu languages are a language family of about 600 languages that are spoken by the Bantu peoples of Central, Southern, Eastern and Southeast Africa. They form the largest branch of the Southern Bantoid languages.
Click consonants, or clicks, are speech sounds that occur as consonants in many languages of Southern Africa and in three languages of East Africa. Examples familiar to English-speakers are the tut-tut or tsk! tsk! used to express disapproval or pity, the tchick! used to spur on a horse, and the clip-clop! sound children make with their tongue to imitate a horse trotting. However, these paralinguistic sounds in English are not full click consonants, as they only involve the front of the tongue, without the release of the back of the tongue that is required for clicks to combine with vowels and form syllables.
Tswana, also known by its native name Setswana, and previously spelled Sechuana in English, is a Bantu language spoken in and indigenous to Southern Africa by about 8.2 million people. It is closely related to the Northern Sotho and Southern Sotho languages, as well as the Kgalagadi language and the Lozi language.
Zulu, or isiZulu as an endonym, is a Southern Bantu language of the Nguni branch spoken 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. Zulu is the most widely spoken home language in South Africa, and it is understood by over 50% of its population. It became one of South Africa's 12 official languages in 1994.
Xhosa, formerly spelled Xosa and also known by its local name isiXhosa, is a Nguni language, indigenous to Southern Africa and one of the official languages of South Africa and Zimbabwe. Xhosa is spoken as a first language by approximately 10 million people and as a second language by another 10 million, mostly in South Africa, particularly in Eastern Cape, Western Cape, Northern Cape and Gauteng, and also in parts of Zimbabwe and Lesotho. It has perhaps the heaviest functional load of click consonants in a Bantu language, with one count finding that 10% of basic vocabulary items contained a click.
SothoSesotho, also known as Southern Sotho or Sesotho sa Borwa is a Southern Bantu language of the Sotho–Tswana ("S.30") group, spoken in Lesotho, and South Africa where it is an official language;
Shona is a Bantu language of the Shona people of Zimbabwe. The term is variously used to collectively describe all the Central Shonic varieties or specifically Standard Shona, a variety codified in the mid-20th century. Using the broader term, the language is spoken by over 14,000,000 people.
Tsonga or, natively, Xitsonga, as an endonym, is a Bantu language spoken by the Tsonga people of South Africa. It is mutually intelligible with Tswa and Ronga and the name "Tsonga" is often used as a cover term for all three, also sometimes referred to as Tswa-Ronga. The Xitsonga language has been standardised for both academic and home use. Tsonga is an official language of South Africa, and under the name "Shangani" it is recognised as an official language in the Constitution of Zimbabwe. All Tswa-Ronga languages are recognised in Mozambique. It is not official in Eswatini.
The bilabial clicks are a family of click consonants that sound like a smack of the lips. They are found as phonemes only in the small Tuu language family, in the ǂ’Amkoe language of Botswana, and in the extinct Damin ritual jargon of Australia. However, bilabial clicks are found paralinguistically for a kiss in various languages, including integrated into a greeting in the Hadza language of Tanzania, and as allophones of labial–velar stops in some West African languages, as of /mw/ in some of the languages neighboring Shona, such as Ndau and Tonga.
Manyika is a Shona language largely spoken by the Manyika tribe in the eastern part of Zimbabwe and across the border in Mozambique. It includes dialects ChiBocha, ChiUngwe, and ChiManyika, from which the broad Manyika language gets its name.
Kalanga, or TjiKalanga, is a Bantu language spoken by the Kalanga people in Botswana and Zimbabwe. It has an extensive phoneme inventory, which includes palatalised, velarised, aspirated and breathy-voiced consonants, as well as whistled sibilants.
The Ndau are an ethnic group which inhabits the areas in south-eastern South Africa. They are also found in parts of Bikita, in Zimbabwe, in central Mozambique all the way to the coast and in central Malawi. The name "Ndau" means Land. Just like the Manyika people in northern Manicaland, their name Manyika also meaning "Owners of the Land", the name Ndau means Land. E.g "Ndau yedu" meaning "our land" When the Ngoni observed this, they called them the Ndau people, the name itself meaning the land, the place or the country in their language. Some suggestions are that the name is derived from the Nguni words "Amading'indawo" which means "those looking for a place" as this is what the Gaza Nguni called them and the name then evolved to Ndau. This is erroneous as the natives are described in detail to have already been occupying parts of Zimbabwe and Mozambique in 1500s by Joao dos Santos. The five largest Ndau groups are the Magova; the Mashanga; the Vatomboti, the Madanda and the Teve. Ancient Ndau People met with the Khoi/San during the first trade with the Arabs at Mapungumbwe and its attributed to the Kalanga people not Ndau. They traded with Arabs with “Mpalu” “Njeti” and “Vukotlo’’ these are the red, white and blue coloured cloths together with golden beads. Ndau people traded traditional herbs, spiritual powers, animal skins and bones.
Northern Ndebele, also called Ndebele, isiNdebele saseNyakatho, Zimbabwean Ndebele or North Ndebele, associated with the term Matabele, is a Bantu language spoken by the Northern Ndebele people which belongs to the Nguni group of languages.
Fanagalo, or Fanakalo, is a vernacular or pidgin based primarily on Zulu with input from English and a small amount of Afrikaans input. It is used as a lingua franca, mainly in the gold, diamond, coal and copper mining industries in South Africa and to a lesser extent in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Namibia, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. Although it is used as a second language only, the number of speakers was estimated as "several hundred thousand" in 1975. By the time independence came–or in the case of South Africa, universal suffrage–English had become sufficiently widely spoken and understood that it became the lingua franca, enabling different ethnic groups in the same country to communicate with each other, and Fanagalo use declined.
The Shona people are a Bantu ethnic group native to Southern Africa, primarily living in Zimbabwe where they form the majority of the population, as well as Mozambique, South Africa, and a worldwide diaspora. There are five major Shona language/dialect clusters: Manyika, Karanga, Zezuru, Korekore, and Ndau.
Phuthi (Síphùthì) is a Nguni Bantu language spoken in southern Lesotho and areas in South Africa adjacent to the same border. The closest substantial living relative of Phuthi is Swati, spoken in Eswatini and the Mpumalanga province of South Africa. Although there is no contemporary sociocultural or political contact, Phuthi is linguistically part of a historic dialect continuum with Swati. Phuthi is heavily influenced by the surrounding Sesotho and Xhosa languages, but retains a distinct core of lexicon and grammar not found in either Xhosa or Sesotho, and found only partly in Swati to the north.
Soshangana Ka Gasa Zikode, born Soshangana Nxumalo, was the Founder and the Monarch of the Gaza Empire, which at the height of its power stretched from the Limpopo river in southern Mozambique up to the Zambezi river in the north. Soshangana ruled over the Gaza state from 1825 until his death in 1858. Soshangana was also known by the name of Manukosi.
Mozambique is a multilingual country. A number of Bantu languages are indigenous to Mozambique. Portuguese, inherited from the colonial period, is the official language, and Mozambique is a full member of the Community of Portuguese Language Countries. Ethnologue lists 43 languages spoken in the country.
The Gaza Empire (1824–1895) was an African empire established by general Soshangane and was located in southeastern Africa in the area of southern Mozambique and southeastern Zimbabwe. The Gaza Empire, at its height in the 1860s, covered all of Mozambique between the Zambezi and Limpopo rivers, known as Gazaland.
{{Infobox country languages|country=Zimbabwe|image=Victoria-Falls-willk-stein.jpg|caption=Sign in English at Victoria Falls, with the falls' name in Lozi |minority=Kunda, Tsoa, Tswa, Lozi, Tjwao |vernacular=Chilapalapa, Zimbabwean English |immigrant= French, Punjabi, Hindi, Afrikaans, Chinese, Portuguese |image size=270px|main=Shona (~40%), Northern Ndebele (~35%), English |sign=Zimbabwean sign languages, American Sign Language|keyboard=QWERTY (US)|keyboard image=|extra=|official=Chewa, Ndebele, English, Kalanga, Koisan, Nambya, Ndau, [[Northern Ndebele language|Shona], Shangani, Shona, Sign Language, Sotho, Tonga, Tswana, Venda, and Xhosa}}Many languages are spoken, or historically have been spoken, in Zimbabwe. Since the adoption of its 2013 Constitution, Zimbabwe has 16 official languages, namely Chewa, Chibarwe, English, Kalanga, Koisan, Nambya, Ndau, Ndebele, Shangani, Shona, sign language, Sotho, Tonga, Tswana, Venda, Xhosa. The country's main languages are Shona, spoken by only 42% of the population, and Ndebele, spoken by roughly 59%. English is the country's lingua franca, used in government and business and as the main medium of instruction in schools. English is the first language of most white Zimbabweans, and is the second language of a majority of black Zimbabweans. Historically, a minority of white Zimbabweans spoke Afrikaans, Greek, Italian, Polish, and Portuguese, among other languages, while Gujarati and Hindi could be found amongst the country's Indian population. Deaf Zimbabweans commonly use one of several varieties of Zimbabwean Sign Language, with some using American Sign Language. Zimbabwean language data is based on estimates, as Zimbabwe has never conducted a census that enumerated people by language.
