Latin script

The Xhosa language employs 26 letters from the Latin alphabet; some of the letters have different pronunciations from English. Phonemes not represented by one of the 26 letters are written as multiple letters. Tone, stress, and vowel length are parts of the language but are generally not indicated in writing.^[16]

Vowels

Xhosa has an inventory of ten vowels: [a], [ɛ~e], [i], [ɔ~o] and [u] written a, e, i, o and u in order, all occurring in both long and short. The /i/ vowel is long in the penultimate syllable and short in the last syllable.^[17]

Tones

Xhosa is a tonal language with two inherent phonemic tones: low and high. Tones are rarely marked in the written language, but they can be indicated ⟨a⟩ [à], ⟨á⟩ [á], ⟨â⟩ [áà], ⟨ä⟩ [àá]. Long vowels are phonemic but are usually not written except for ⟨â⟩ and ⟨ä⟩, which are each sequence of two vowels with different tones that are realized as long vowels with contour tones (⟨â⟩ high–low = falling, ⟨ä⟩ low–high = rising).

Consonants

Xhosa is rich in uncommon consonants. Besides pulmonic egressive sounds, which are found in all spoken languages, it has a series of ejective stops and one implosive stop.

It has 18 click consonants (in comparison, Juǀʼhoan, spoken in Botswana and Namibia, has 48, and Taa, with roughly 4,000 speakers in Botswana, has 83). There is a series of six dental clicks, represented by the letter ⟨c⟩, similar to the sound represented in English by "tut-tut" or "tsk-tsk"; a series of six alveolar lateral clicks, represented by the letter ⟨x⟩, similar to the sound used to call horses; and a series of alveolar clicks, represented by the letter ⟨q⟩, that sounds somewhat like a cork pulled from a bottle.

The following table lists the consonant phonemes of the language, with the pronunciation in IPA on the left and the orthography on the right:

1. Two additional consonants, [r] and [r̤], are found in borrowings. Both are spelled ⟨r⟩.
2. Two additional consonants, [ʒ] and [ʒ̈], are found in borrowings. Both are spelled ⟨zh⟩.
3. Two additional consonants, [dz] and [dz̤], are found in loans. Both are spelled ⟨dz⟩, as the sound [d̥zʱ].
4. An additional consonant, [ŋ̈] is found in loans. It is spelled ⟨ngh⟩.
5. The onset cluster /kl/ from phonologized loanwords such as ikliniki "the clinic" can be realized as a single consonant [kʟ̥ʼ].
6. The unwritten glottal stop is present in words like uku(ʔ)ayinela "to iron", uku(ʔ)a(ʔ)aza "to stutter", uku(ʔ)amza "to stall".
7. In informal writing, this murmured consonant can sometimes be seen spelled as ⟨vh⟩ as in ukuvha, but this is non-standard.
8. Sequences of /jw/ as in ukushiywa "abandonment" are phonologically realized [ɥ], but this sound is non-phonemic.

In addition to the ejective affricate [tʃʼ], the spelling ⟨tsh⟩ may also be used for either of the aspirated affricates [tsʰ] and [tʃʰ].

The breathy voiced glottal fricative [ɦ] is sometimes spelled ⟨h⟩.

The ejectives tend to be ejective only in careful pronunciation or in salient positions and, even then, only for some speakers. Otherwise, they tend to be tenuis (plain) stops. Similarly, the tenuis (plain) clicks are often glottalised, with a long voice onset time, but that is uncommon.

The murmured clicks, plosives and affricates are only partially voiced, with the following vowel murmured for some speakers. That is, da may be pronounced [dʱa̤] (or, equivalently, [d̥a̤]). They are better described as slack voiced than as breathy voiced. They are truly voiced only after nasals, but the oral occlusion is then very short in stops, and it usually does not occur at all in clicks. Therefore, the absolute duration of voicing is the same as in tenuis stops. (They may also be voiced between vowels in some speaking styles.) The more notable characteristic is their depressor effect on the tone of the syllable.^[20]

Nouns

The Xhosa noun consists of two essential parts, the prefix and the stem. Using the prefixes, nouns can be grouped into noun classes, which are numbered consecutively, to ease comparison with other Bantu languages. Which they call 'amahlelo'

The following table gives an overview of Xhosa noun classes, arranged according to singular-plural pairs.

¹ Before monosyllabic stems, e.g. iliso (eye), uluhlu (list).

² is- and iz- replace isi- and izi- respectively before stems beginning with a vowel, e.g. isandla/izandla (hand/hands).

³ The placeholder N in the prefixes iN- and iiN- is a nasal consonant which assimilates in place to the following consonant (producing an im- before vowels), but is typically absent in loanwords.

⁴ Before monosyllabic stems in some words.

Verbs

Verbs use the following prefixes for the subject and object:

Examples

ukudlala – to play

ukubona – to see

umntwana – a child

abantwana – children

umntwana uyadlala – the child is playing

abantwana bayadlala – the children are playing

indoda – a man

amadoda – men

indoda iyambona umntwana – the man sees the child

amadoda ayababona abantwana – the men see the children

Anthem

Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika is part of the national anthem of South Africa, national anthem of Tanzania and Zambia, and the former anthem of Zimbabwe and Namibia. It is a hymn written in Xhosa by Enoch Sontonga in 1897. The single original stanza was:

Nkosi, sikelel' iAfrika;

Maluphakanyis' uphondo lwayo;

Yizwa imithandazo yethu

Nkosi sikelela, thina lusapho lwayo.

Lord, bless Africa;

May her horn rise high up;

Hear Thou our prayers

Lord, bless us, its family (, the family of Africa).

Additional stanzas were written later by Sontonga and other writers, and the original verse was translated into Sotho and Afrikaans, as well as English.