The word Xhosa starts with a click. In Xhosa spelling, x stands for the lateral click: the side of your tongue pulls away from your back teeth with the sound some people use to get a horse moving, and the h after it adds a puff of breath. So the first lesson for anyone who wants to learn Xhosa is hidden in the name of the language.
Most English speakers worry about the clicks first, and the worry doesn't last. There are three basic clicks, most learners can make them slowly within a week or two, and speed comes with use. The bigger job comes after that: noun classes, a system in which the prefix on a noun changes the start of the verbs and adjectives that go with it. A sensible plan puts clicks and greetings in the first two weeks, noun classes after that, and daily review all the way through.
Where Xhosa is spoken
Xhosa, or isiXhosa, is one of South Africa's official languages. It's spoken mainly in the Eastern Cape and the Western Cape, including Cape Town, and by many people in Gauteng. Somewhere between 8 and 10 million people speak it as a first language, about one South African in six, and millions more speak it as a second. Speakers call the language isiXhosa and themselves amaXhosa, and those prefixes are your first lesson in noun classes.
Xhosa is a Bantu language of the Nguni group, along with Zulu, Swati and Ndebele. Xhosa and Zulu are close enough that speakers can often follow each other, though they're separate languages with their own standards. The clicks came into the Nguni languages through long contact with Khoisan languages, which use them even more.
Further north, in Zimbabwe, Shona is another Bantu language with noun classes but no clicks, if you want to see the same grammar idea in a different setting.
The three clicks
| Letter | Click | How to make it | Example |
|---|---|---|---|
| c | dental | Pull the tip of your tongue back from your upper front teeth: the "tsk" of mild disapproval | ukucula, to sing |
| q | alveolar | Press your tongue to the roof of your mouth and pull it down sharply, for a hollow pop like a cork | ukuqala, to begin |
| x | lateral | Release the side of your tongue from your back teeth: the horse-urging sound | ixesha, time |
Each click also combines with a puff of breath (ch, qh, xh), with voicing (gc, gq, gx) and with nasal sounds (nc, nq, nx, ngc, ngq, ngx), which gives around fifteen click consonants in all. Practice in steps: the click alone, then the click with a vowel, then the whole word, slowly. Whatever you do, don't replace the click with a k to save time. It's an easy habit to fall into and a hard one to break.
How to learn Xhosa noun classes
Every Xhosa noun belongs to a class, marked by a prefix that usually changes in the plural:
- umntu, "person"; abantu, "people"
- isitulo, "chair"; izitulo, "chairs"
The prefix then echoes through the sentence. Umntu uyahamba means "the person is going"; Abantu bayahamba, "the people are going". Change the noun, and the verb changes with it. That's the core of Xhosa grammar, and it's why you should learn nouns with their plurals and learn agreement in whole sentences rather than from tables.
The rest is friendlier than it looks. Xhosa uses the Latin alphabet and spells words the way they sound, it has five clear vowels, words end in vowels, and stress usually falls on the second-to-last syllable. Xhosa is a tone language, but tones aren't marked in writing, so you'll pick them up by ear over time rather than from the page.
