Xhosa language

Xhosa is one of the official languages of South Africa. Xhosa is spoken by 7.6 million people, or about 18% of the South African population. Xhosa is written using a Latin alphabet. Henry Hare Dugmore helped translate the entire Bible in Xhosa language. Xhosa has ten vowels.

Xhosa
isiXhosa
Native to	South Africa, Zimbabwe, Lesotho
Region	Eastern Cape, Western Cape, KwaZulu-Natal, Northern Cape, Free State
Ethnicity	Xhosa people
Native speakers	8.2 million (2011 census)[1] 11 million L2 speakers (2002)[2]
Language family	Niger–Congo Atlantic–Congo Benue–Congo Southern Bantoid Bantu Southern Bantu Nguni Zunda Xhosa
Writing system	Latin (Xhosa alphabet) Xhosa Braille
Signed forms	Signed Xhosa[3]
Official status
Official language in	South Africa  Zimbabwe
Language codes
ISO 639-1	xh
ISO 639-2	xho
ISO 639-3	xho
Glottolog	xhos1239
Guthrie code	S.41[4]
Linguasphere	99-AUT-fa incl. varieties 99-AUT-faa to 99-AUT-faj + 99-AUT-fb (isiHlubi)
Proportion of the South African population that speaks Xhosa at home   0–20%   20–40%   40–60%   60–80%   80–100%
This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA.

Xhosa is well known for its set of three major clicks.