Xhosa

The Xhosa Language

Xhosa (Wikipedia: Xhosa language) is a (Wikipedia: Nguni Bantu) language spoken mainly in Africa. Its widespread use is not very common and only has a small number of individuals enacting the language (11 million)

Apertium Language Pairs

Currently, on Apertium, the language of Xhosa is recorded to have one language pair:

• Zulu-?-Xhosa (08 Nov 2010) (most likely incubator)

(list of language pairs)

Computational Linguistics/Comparative Studies

Comparative Study: Zulu - Xhosa

• - The similarities between the two languages based on a morphological analyzer (ZuluMorph) cross-linguistically

Xhosa Cross Linguistics

• - Research by the University of Western Cape providing cross linguistics upon Xhosa corpora

Xhosa Literary + Academic Study (Rhodes University)

• Providing Academic Studies on Literary Aspects of Xhosa

The Tone Analysis of Xhosa

• The Tonemes of Xhosa

Linguistic Grammar

• http://www.academicroom.com/topics/what-is-xhosa-language - a concept summary providing full context over the following grammars stated and discussed

Xhosa contains multiple prefixes and suffixes which are attached to root words. Thus, the language is declassified into fifteen morphological classes or genders. Furthermore, the language is unique based on its tones, the phonemic low, and high tones;

• they are a [à], á [á], â [áà], ä [àá]. Long vowels are phonemic but are usually not written, except for â and ä

The usage of uncommon consonants is dominant throughout the language in the version of clicks. The language uses 21 clicks (7 dental), however, the number of clicks varies based on each region (Namibia and Botswana primarily)

Examples

• ukudlala - to play
• ukubona - to see
• umntwana - a child
• abantwana - children
• umntwana uyadlala - the child plays
• abantwana bayadlala - the children play
• indoda - a man
• amadoda - men
• indoda iyambona umntwana - the man sees the child
• amadoda ayababona abantwana - the men see the children
• Zonke zinto ezilungile zivela kuThixo - all things that are good proceed from God.

Xhosa Pronunciation + Language Set:Omniglot Writing Systems and Languages

Update: Zulu is a large complement to the language of Xhosa, so most common corpora, morphologies, etc. contain Zulu

Bilingual/Monolingual Dictionaries

(most are mainly decoded within English subtexts and contexts)

• Oxford Studies http://tshwanedje.com/members/gmds/documents/Prinsloo_on_OZSD.pdf
• English to Xhosa Bilingual Dictionary https://glosbe.com/en/xh/ - Includes Zulu transcripts
• - Xhosa to English Dictionary http://www.gononda.com/xhosa/

Due to the language being indigenous and mostly forgotten as a dialect of the older remnants of Africa, many dictionaries could not be found so many of these dictionaries are transcribed to the modern English meanings

Monolingual/Parallel Corpora

• Leipzig Corpora Dictionaries http://corpora.uni-leipzig.de/en?corpusId=deu_newscrawl_2011
• - Crawling Under-Resourced Languages, Focusing upon Xhosa to Zulu Corpora
• Koliswa Moropa (2007) - English/Xhosa Parallel Corpus
• - Corpus Linguistics (focusing on English Xhosan)
• Natasha Govender, Etienne Barnard, Marelie Davel: Developing Intonation Corpora for isiXhosa and isiZulu