Zulu Profile
Alternate Names:
Isizulu
Number of Speakers:
Approximately 8.8 million
Key Dialects:
Literary Zulu and others
Geographical Center:
Eastern South Africa
Educational Resources:
Few
GENERAL INTRODUCTION
A total of 8.5 million people in South Africa speak Zulu; there
are an additional 37,500 in Malawi; 15,000 in southern Swaziland;
and 228,000 in Lesotho (Grimes 1992). The main concentrations
are in Natal Province and within Natal in Kwazulu; in
southeastern Transvaal; and northeastern Orange Free State. It
is a "dominant language" (Grobler et al. 1990) in at least a
dozen or so districts in Transvaal, and one large district in the
Orange Free State. Afrikaans and English are official languages,
but Zulu is considered a "national" language in the Republic of
South Africa. Of all the languages spoken in Southern Africa,
including English and Afrikaans it has the largest number of
speakers.
LINGUISTIC AFFILIATION
Zulu is a Nguni language that also includes Xhosa, Swati, and
Ndebele (the latter spoken in Zimbabwe and parts of the Republic
of South Africa); they are closely related and are mutually
intelligible. However, they are generally not considered as
dialects of the same language for cultural, historical, and
political reasons. For instance, Zulu and Xhosa have their own
identities in the view of individual speakers of the respective
languages. The Nguni languages are part a much larger related
group of Southeastern Bantu languages that includes, along with
the Nguni group, Sotho (Northern, Southern, and Tswana), Tsonga,
Venda, and Inhambane (Chopi and Tonga). For the most part these
are spoken within the Republic of South Africa; Tswana is
predominantly spoken in Botswana and in the former "homeland" of
Bophuthatswana; Inhambane languages are found in southern
Mozambique. In turn all these languages just mentioned are
related to the Shona dialect cluster, predominantly spoken in
Zimbabwe. The group inclusive of all the above is also known as
Narrow Bantu 'S'. As a Bantu language, Zulu is related to a
large number of languages spoken throughout much of Eastern,
Southern, and Central Africa from South Africa to Cameroon in the
west and Kenya in the east.
LANGUAGE VARIATION
Zulu has a number of dialects, four of which are generally
recognized as the major dialects: Zulu (of Zululand), Zulu (of
Natal), Lala and Qwabe (Voegelin and Voegelin 1977).
Van Wyk (1966) lists at least four regional variants of Zulu:
Zululand (KwaZulu in Natal Province), of Natal itself, the
Transvaal, and Zimbabwean Ndebele. One scholar (Doke 1954) has a
somewhat different list. Ndebele (or Northern Ndebele), spoken
by the Matabele in Zimbabwe is a mutually intelligible dialect of
Zulu, but for nonlinguistic reasons could be considered a
separate language. It is spoken by the descendants of Mzilikazi
and his followers who fled across the Limpopo River into present
day Zimbabwe in 1837. There is a Zulu based pidgin, known as
Fanagalo (and by a host of other references), with a mixture of
English, Afrikaans, Zulu, and other African language vocabulary
material, which is used as a lingua franca among industrial
workers.
ORTHOGRAPHY
Zulu has a Roman-based orthography which represents the spoken
language well. The click sounds (see Linguistic Sketch below)
are written using various combinations of graphemes; these are
difficult to learn but are manageable. Written Zulu is governed
by a the Zulu Language Board of KwaZulu, and is considered by
some to reflect an archaic or highly stilted form of the
language.
LINGUISTIC SKETCH
Zulu is an agglutinative language, that is, grammatical
information is conveyed by attaching prefixes and suffixes to
roots and stems. As in other Bantu languages, nouns are divided
into sets or classes, referred to as grammatical genders. Each
gender has two distinct prefixes, one marking singular nouns, the
other plural nouns. There are numerous classes far exceeding the
masculine, feminine and neuter classifications of familiar
European languages and each class is roughly associated with
certain semantic characteristics; for instance, there are classes
for human beings, kinship terms, animals, plants, artifacts,
abstract concepts, and so on.
Verbs are complex; a system of affixes mark various grammatical
relations, such as subject, object, tense, aspect, and mood.
Suffixes on verbs are used to derive, for example, passive,
causative, reciprocal, and prepositional verb forms. There is a
system of concordial agreement in which subject nouns, object
nouns optionally, and other sentence constituents must agree with
the verb of the sentence in class and number. Adjectives,
possessive pronouns and demonstratives also agree in class and
number with the noun they modify.
The phonology of Zulu is characterized by a simple vowel
inventory and a highly marked consonantal system with ejectives,
implosives and clicks. It is also a tone language with inherent
high and low tones.
Zulu, and other Southern Bantu languages have borrowed words
extensively from Khoisan (languages of southern Africa aboriginal
hunter-gatherer populations) and in modern times from English and
Afrikaans.
ROLE IN SOCIETY
The role of African languages in South Africa is complex and
ambiguous. Their use in education has been governed by
legislation beginning with the Bantu Education Act of 1953 that
has been revised over the years to reflect a changing political
climate. At present Zulu is used in primary schools up to
Standard 2, but thereafter is replaced by English although it is
studied as a subject in both primary and secondary schools. At
the secondary level most schools serving Zulu speaking students
use English. All education at the university level throughout
South Africa is in English or Afrikaans, but Zulu is taught as a
subject in ten institutions of higher learning. In KwaZulu, it
is the language of primary education in the lower grades and a
compulsory subject up to Standard 10.
A considerable literature, including both prose and poetry,
exists in Zulu. Literacy is high at 70 percent (Grimes 1992).
The South African Broadcasting Corporation has domestic service
in Zulu in both radio (up to 129 hours per week) and television
(15 hours a week by TV2). A number of publications, newspapers,
and monthlies are published in Zulu, or in Zulu and English or
other African languages (see list in Europa Publications
1993).
Zulu is a language spoken well beyond its home areas; it is
understood by all speakers of Nguni languages and is used as a
lingua franca, either in its pidginized form of Fanagalo, or more
standard variants, by many non-Nguni speakers from Natal to
Zimbabwe. Zulu is one of the official languages of South Africa
and plays a major role in Natal Province and throughout the
Republic.
HISTORY
Zulu speaking peoples or their immediate Nguni speaking
forbearers inhabited coastal regions of southeastern Africa since
before the sixteenth century. Their entry into Southern Africa,
along with other Ngun