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The sounds of South African languages

Writer's picture: PaigePaige

My mom showed me this really interesting video of a man explaining the "clicking" sounds in South African languages.

He says there are four groups of Nguni people in the Eastern part of South Africa. He said the four groups are Zulu, Xhosa, Ndebele and Swazi. (I had heard of Xhosa before. It was the language used in the movie Black Panther and it was the language that Nelson Mandela spoke.)


The video explains that there are 11 official languages in South Africa and can easily communicate with each other.


The video goes over four "clicking" sounds.

  • The first is a "p" sound that sounds like a popping sound when you smack your lips.

  • The second is a "c" sound that sounds like how you would try to suck something out of your front teeth.

  • The next was the letter "x" which sounds like you're trying to suck something out of your back teeth.

  • The last one was the letter "q" which is like a hard knock sound you'd make with your tongue.

At the end of the video, the speaker puts it all into a sentence and it sounds so cool.

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