Thread by @magi_jay

1/ Okay, full disclosure, I haven't seen #BlackPanther yet, but I just found out that the Wakandan language in the film is Xhosa and I am super excited. . . . fastcompany.com/40538025/the-l…

The Xhosa language is a Bantu language, spoken in southern regions of Africa. It is an official language in South Africa & in Zimbabwe.

Xhosa is part of the "Niger-Congo" family of languages, which is a BIG & diverse family of languages.

This map gives a pretty good representation of where Xhosa is located regionally.

Keep in mind, there are between 1500-2000 languages in Africa. Most people speak MULTIPLE languages.

Now, all languages are cool. But Xhosa is, well, super cool (that's the technical description). Why? Well, for lots of reasons, but one of them is that the sound system is SO FREAKING COMPLEX.

Xhosa has BOTH tones (like Mandarin) and clicks. Both of these features make it almost impossible for non-native speakers to master in either speech production OR speech comprehension.

If you want an idea of what I'm talking about here is the consonant inventory of Xhosa:

Compare that to the consonant inventory of English:

Or French:

Now, like I said, Xhosa has clicks, which is one of the features that makes it so interesting AND so difficult (clicks only exist in a handful of African languages--mostly in S. Africa w/ a few in E. Africa. No other world languages have clicks.).

Clicks involve a completely different manipulation of the airstream than other consonants. I would love to go into more detail, but I am afraid I will bore you all to tears.

So, to be brief: in English, we're basically just pushing air OUT of our lungs and manipulate it in various ways w/in our throat/mouths to make our rather limited consonant inventory.

In Xhosa, speakers are doing the same thing. But they are also doing a *different* manipulation of the airstream in order to produce clicks; specifically, to speak Xhosa, you must push air OUT like in English, but also trap air to produce different kinds of pressure: clicks.

If you've stayed w/ me, I'll show you why this is so neat and important. Clicks aren't just random sounds. They make all of the difference in the meanings of words.

Here is a visual example:

I encourage you to go to the site and click on ALL the words to hear all the clicks. Try to imagine what kind of time you would have learning to distinguish ALL of these different meanings based on these click variations:

(note also the use of tone!)

phonetics.ucla.edu/course/chapter…

The contrast between "to pick up" and "perfume" is one of my favorites. It would take you soooooooooo long as a non-native speaker to effectively encode these differences in spoken language:

Anyway, Xhosa is cool for a lot of reasons--not just clicks! The grammar is neat too. But I love the sound system of this language.

I'm glad the rare complexity of Xhosa is being highlighted in #BlackPanther.