Xhosa, also known by its local name isiXhosa, is a Bantu language indigenous to Southern Africa and one of the official languages of South Africa and Zimbabwe.
Facts
ISO 639-3 Code Speaker Count2013 estimate, first-language speakers; the infobox also gives 11 million second-language speakers (2002), not captured here. StatusWikipedia article on Xhosa: a currently spoken living language with an active native-speaker population; checked 2026-09-27. Attested From (Year) Regioneastern Eastern Cape; scattered communities elsewhere 2 Browse and compare
Difficulty for an English Speaker Classification
Language Kind Official Status Connections
In Family
Source Wikipedia: Xhosa Language
Source Wikipedia: Xhosa Language
Written In
Xhosa is standardly written in the Latin alphabet.
In the Other Atlases
Cases Where Used
Also in Society and Culture Atlas: used in this subject.
Source Wikipedia: XhosaLead paragraph of the cited Wikipedia articletier 3Quote, Lead paragraph of the cited Wikipedia article
The Xhosa people ( KAW-sə, KOH-sə; Xhosa pronunciation: [kǁʰɔ́ːsa] ) are an ethnic group in South Africa, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Namibia and Lesotho.
Original Language Of
Also in Film and Media Atlas: a work originally in this language.
Found In
Also in Geography Atlas: where this subject is found.
Source Glottolog
Sources
1. Glottolog: Xhosa (Glottolog languoid xhos1239)
GlottologEndangerment, AES statusQuote, Endangerment, AES status
AES status: not endangered
2. Wikipedia: Xhosa Language
Wikimedia FoundationLead section
Xhosa ( KOH-sə, Xhosa: [ᵏǁʰôːsa] ), formerly spelled Xosa and also known by its endonym isiXhosa, is a Bantu language, indigenous to Southern Africa and one of the official languages of South Africa and Zimbabwe.
Infobox, ISO 639-3
xho
Article text
Nelson Mandela's Xhosa initiation ceremony is featured in the 2013 film Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom.
Infobox, Region
eastern Eastern Cape; scattered communities elsewhere
Phonology
Xhosa is a tonal language with two inherent phonemic tones: low and high.
In Family: Atlantic-Congo, Infobox: fam2
Atlantic-Congo
In Family: Southern Bantu languages, Infobox: fam8
Southern Bantu
View the Source 3. WALS Online (World Atlas of Language Structures): Xhosa / Order of Subject, Object and Verb (WALS datapoint)
WALS Online (World Atlas of Language Structures)Datapoint pageQuote, Datapoint page
Feature: Order of Subject, Object and Verb by Matthew S. Dryer Value: SVO
4. Effective Language Learning: Language Difficulty Ranking
Effective Language LearningForeign Service Institute categories listQuote, Foreign Service Institute categories list
Category IV: 44 weeks (1100 hours) Languages with significant linguistic and/or cultural differences from English Albanian Amharic Armenian Azerbaijani Bengali Bosnian Bulgarian Burmese Croatian Czech * Estonian * Finnish * Georgian Greek Hebrew Hindi * Hungarian Icelandic Khmer Lao Latvian Lithuanian Macedonian * Mongolian Nepali Pashto Persian (Dari, Farsi, Tajik) Polish Russian Serbian Sinhala Slovak Slovenian Tagalog * Thai Turkish Ukrainian Urdu Uzbek * Vietnamese Xhosa
5. Omniglot: Xhosa language, alphabet and pronunciation
OmniglotLanguage at a glanceQuote, Language at a glance
First written : 1823
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