Xhosa is spoken mainly in South Africa and Zimbabwe, and is part of the Nguni language group, which are closely related to Bantu languages. The origin of this language is somewhat of a legend and no one really knows how it came about.
We included Xhosa because it is one of the few languages (besides Zulu) which includes click sounds, and which has dictionary words available online. Thankfully we were able to meet with a Xhosa native speaker online and gather some click words that way.
Here are the 20 fundamental consonants used when speaking Xhosa.
For a complete list of possible consonants a human voice might make while speaking a natural language, check out the consonants page.
This language has ejective consonants, implosive consonants, aspirated consonants, and palatalized consonants.
| bilabial | labiodental | dental | alveolar | postalveolar | retroflex | velar | uvular | pharyngeal | glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| voiced nasal | |||||||||||
| quiet plosive | |||||||||||
| quiet aspirated plosive | |||||||||||
| quiet ejective plosive | |||||||||||
| voiced implosive plosive | |||||||||||
| quiet sibilant fricative | |||||||||||
| quiet non-sibilant fricative | |||||||||||
| voiced non-sibilant fricative | |||||||||||
| voiced trill | |||||||||||
| quiet lateral fricative | |||||||||||
| voiced lateral approximant | |||||||||||
| quiet lateral approximant |
These are the 6 base vowels used when speaking Xhosa.
Also, a complete list of possible vowels a human voice might make while speaking can be found here.
| manner | front unrounded | front rounded | front central unrounded | front central rounded | central unrounded | central rounded | back central unrounded | back central rounded | back unrounded | back rounded | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| close | |||||||||||
| close-mid | |||||||||||
| open-mid | |||||||||||
| open |