Talk:Xhosa

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Contents

[edit] xhosa sound clips

Needs sound clips!

  • Those would be more appropriate on the isiXhosa page.

[edit] initiation

The article Nelson Mandela links here with a reference to initiation in Xhosa culture -

"Following Xhosa custom he was initiated at age 16, and attended Clarkebury Boarding Institute, learning about Western culture."

--63.202.184.40 09:13, 12 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Famous Xhosa People

Osama Bin Laden is not Southern African and the article Osama bin Laden states no evidence of his ever leaving the Middle East. Even if he might speak Xhosa he is not a member of the Xhosa people. Please remove his name.

Removed. But in the future, with Wikipedia--YOU can edit the pages. Be bold! Joewright 04:39, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Infobox

I've added the WikiProject Ethnic groups infobox to improve the page.

[edit] Bulelani Ngcuka

Any source on the claim that Bulelani Ngcuka is Xhosa? I distinctly remember how he testified about applying for a home in KwaZulu on the base the he is an ethnic Zulu. --21:07, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

Removed while it seems under dispute --21:00, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

Bulelani Ngcuka's wife is ethinic Zulu he is Xhosa. The Zulu equivalent of his name would be. Bongani Mpisi

Bulelani ( Xhosa) = Bongani ( Zulu) Ngcuka ( Xhosa) = Mpisi ( Zulu)

Therefore he is Xhosa.

[edit] Remove "Great Lakes" link?

Why have a link to the Great Lakes of North America in this article?

[edit] Xhosa/isiXhosa

Please decide which you are going to use for the sake of consistency. I prefer 'Xhosa' because it is correct in British English, and is the more logical >> [Xhosa is to isiXhosa as German is to Deutch]. (Which English is supposed to used in Wiki anyway??) DawnTreader196.207.40.213 19:31, 15 April 2007 (UTC)


Completely agree with you — "Xhosa" is the correct name of the language in English (in all Englishes, not just British English, by the way). If you are talking Xhosa, you would refer to the language as isiXhosa. But it is a silly pretension to call the language isiXhosa when you are speaking English, just as it would be to say "Huberta's mother-tongue is Gaeilge" when what you mean to say is "Huberta's mother-tongue is Irish".
(You get pretentious people saying the same about other languages which have initial inflexions, thus "There are many seTswana speakers in Johannesburg" when what they mean is "There are many Tswana speakers in Johannesburg".)
As for consistency, I find this article to be pretty consistent in using the correct form, Xhosa, for the language. Thus the fourth paragraph of the intro states, correctly, "...As of 2003 the majority of Xhosa speakers, approximately 5.3 million, live in the Eastern Cape..."
And the section about the language states, correctly, "...Xhosa is an agglutinative tonal language of the Bantu family. While the Xhosas call their language "isiXhosa," the most common name in English is "Xhosa." Written Xhosa uses a Latin alphabet-based system. Xhosa is spoken by about 18% of the South African population, and has some mutual intelligibility with Zulu. Many Xhosa speakers, particularly those living in urban areas, also speak Zulu and/or Afrikaans and/or English..."and "...Among its features, the Xhosa language famously has fifteen click sounds, originally borrowed from now extinct Khoisan languages of the region. Xhosa has three basic click consonants..."
&cet. Brockle 11:36, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Nevertheless, it is common practice to put the name of the language as said in the language itself at the top of language articles, so that's what I've done. Exploding Boy 18:26, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] The Clicks and Khoisan

The Khoisan languages are not extinct, hence the existing internal link. Do we know which specific language the Xhosa adopted their 'clicks' from? Can someone elaborate on this please. 196.207.40.213 20:03, 15 April 2007 (UTC) DawnTreader

[edit] "related groups" info removed from infobox

For dedicated editors of this page: The "Related Groups" info was removed from all {{Infobox Ethnic group}} infoboxes. Comments may be left on the Ethnic groups talk page. Ling.Nut 20:41, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Amagqira

Corrected the spelling of "amagqira". The voiced verision of the alveolar click is spelled "gq". It is spelled correctly in the word "Qongqongthwane" (=the knocking beetle), however. The click song contains the word "igqira" (singular of "amagqira"), btw. Ake Torngren (talk) 20:01, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm quite certain that should be amagqirha, with the h...
(You're absolute right. "rh" is the modern spelling for the sound similar to
"g" in Dutch/Afrikaans. However, one often seems "r" for that sound in names, and in

older taxts. "Radebe" comes to mind.... Ake Torngren (talk) 13:22, 23 May 2008 (UTC))

You've spelt it properly in the article. Tebello TheWHAT!!?? 20:35, 21 May 2008 (UTC)
Changed "q" to refer to palatal rather than alveolar clicks. It is correctly referred

to in the table under the heading "Consonants" in the article "en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xhosa_language".

Ake Torngren (talk) 13:22, 23 May 2008 (UTC)
Clicks are a confusing bunch. I've just read the Click consonants article and had a few lightbulb moments.
I can't remember the exact source, but I do remember reading somewhere that many isiXhosa speakers have a tendency of pronouncing the palatal click as a retroflex (alveolar) click. I think I've heard this pronunciation myself, but I'm not entirely confident in my real-world phonetics skills. Also, many sources (such as Doke and Mofokeng's classic Textbook of Southern Sotho Grammar) call this q click "palato-alveolar."
There also seems to be some confusion over whether these clicks really have a velar closure or whether its uvular (certainly, in my own native Sesotho pronunciation I simply can't pronounce the clicks if I try to make an ejective "k" sound at the same time, but it certainly sounds uvular to me) and thus whether certain Khoisan languages truly have a distinction between clicks with velar ejective k' and uvular ejective q' accompanimenur as the literature claims.
Hmmm.. Tebello TheWHAT!!?? 17:23, 23 May 2008 (UTC)