Xhosa (English pronunciation: /ˈkoʊsə/, Xhosa: isiXhosa [isikǁʰóːsa]) is one of the official languages of South Africa. Xhosa is spoken by approximately 7.9 million people, or about 18% of the South African population. Like most Bantu languages, Xhosa is a tonal language, that is, the same sequence of consonants and vowels can have different meanings when said with a rising or falling or high or low intonation. One of the most distinctive features of the language is the prominence of click consonants; the word "Xhosa", the name of the language itself, begins with a click.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xhosa_language
The Xhosa language
I though you might like to know about the local language. The local tribe are called the Xhosa, it is a very big tribe with many millions people, similar in stature to the Zulus. Nelson Mandela is a Xhosa and was actually born and brought up close to here. If you were wondering how to pronounce Xhosa it's harder than you might think, the Xh is actually a click, a bit like the noise people make when they want a horse to go faster. To make things harder there are 3 different clicks to get your tongue around, ‘c’ is a bit like making a ‘tut’ and and ‘q’ is like the sound of a cork popping. The Guiness Book of Records even lists a Xhosa phrase as the most difficult tongue twister in the world, it includes the work for windpipe which is 'uquoquoquo'. As you can imagine I’m having all sorts of fun and games trying to incorporate this into my daily speech but at least people seem to appreciate it if you just give it a try. Not surprisingly I have to work with an interpreter all the time at the moment and probably will have to for the whole year. If you are accepted by people here they like to give you a Xhosa name, I’m hoping mine will have a click in it that I can show off when I get home.
Just a note on the strike, it is supposed to get worse tomorrow with the unions calling for a complete shut-down of the country. We have been promised a skeleton of staff for the hospital which I hope we will get. Understandably the nurses have been quite scared as working nurses in larger central hospitals have been physically abused but other strikers. Fingers crossed then…
http://tomboyles.blogspot.com/2007/06/xhosa-language.html
Xhosa is one of the official languages of South Africa and is a member of the Bantu/Nguni family of languages. It is spoken by about 6.5 million people mainly in Eastern Cape Province, Orange Free State, Ciskei and Transkei in South Africa, and also spoken in Botswana and Lesotho. Xhosa is closely related to Zulu, Swati and Ndebele and more or less mutually intelligible with them.
Xhosa's click consonants were most likely borrowed from the Khoisan languages as a result of long and extensive interaction between the Xhosa and Khoisan peoples.
A system for writing Xhosa using the Latin alphabet was devised by Christian missionaries during the early 19th century. The first printed work in Xhosa was a grammar book that was published in 1834.
Xhosa is written using a Latin alphabet-based system. Three letters are used to indicate the basic clicks: c for dental clicks, x for lateral clicks, and q for palatal clicks (for a more detailed explanation, see the table of consonant phonemes, below). Tones are not indicated in the written form.
Te Xh in Xhosa is pronounced with a sideways click - it's the one you make to horses, with your tongue in cheek not against your front teeth, if that helps. More of a "Donk!" click than a "Tsk!" click is how I think of it. The Wiki article has a soundfile that sounds about right, although not as "clicky" as I (or anyone I know) does it. I'm not a Xhosa speaker, but my wife is. Funny, that, her being the white one...
I think that's how he confirmed it, but it was generally accepted that there had been intermarriage along the edges, enhanced at times by Khoekhoen rebels taking refuge from whites by fleeing into Xhosa lands. There's a distinct yellowish skin cast and features of nose and eyefolds that are characteristic, and it decreases the further away from the old border regions one moves.
