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Xhosa belongs to the Bantu/Nguni languages family and has around 7.9 million speakers most of whom live in Orange Free State, Eastern Cape Province, Transkei and Ciskei in South Africa. It is recognized as one of the official languages of South Africa. Besides various parts of South Africa, Xhosa is also spoken in Lesotho and Botswana. 

Tomedes has worked on many Xhosa translation projects along with a team of substantially experienced and qualified Xhosa language translation providers. Xhosa translators specializing in a variety of language pairs are registered with us, enabling us to provide language translations for diverse Xhosa language pairs including Xhosa to English and English to Xhosa translation. 

• Xhosa language is closely related with Swati, Zulu and Ndebele and shares a fair degree of mutual intelligibility with them. 
  

• The written form of Xhosa was developed in the early years of 19th century by Christian missionaries. It was based on the Latin alphabet.
  

• 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. 
  

• Xhosa, like most Bantu languages, is a tonal language. This means that the same order of consonants and vowels in Xhosa can indicate different meanings depending upon the intonation. 
  

• The importance of click consonants is a significant distinctive feature of the language. In fact the name of the language itself i.e. "Xhosa" begins with a click. According to linguists, the click consonants used in Xhosa were most likely taken from Khoisan language because Xhosa and Khoisan speakers have had a long history of extensive interaction.
  

• Nearly 15% of Xhosa vocabulary is made up of words that have their origins in Khoisan. Other languages which have contributed words to the Xhosa vocabulary are Afrikaans and English.
  

• Xhosa is written with a Latin alphabet-based system. The basic clicks are indicated by three letters, they are c (dental clicks), x (lateral clicks), and q (palatal clicks). Tones are not specified in writing.
  

• Though linguists are not confirmed about the divisions between the various Xhosa dialects, the standard Xhosa dialect is Ngqika /Rharhabe. Other dialects include Bomvana, Cele, Ndlambe, Gcaleka, Bhaca, Thembu, Mpondo, Mpondomse (Mpondomise), Xesibe and Mfengu. There is yet another dialect named Hlubi, but it is debatable whether it is a part of Xhosa or Zulu.
  

• Xhosa is described as an agglutinative language and uses a large number of prefixes and suffixes that are attached to root words.
  

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