The Southern Ndebele language (isiNdebele or Nrebele in Southern Ndebele) is an African language belonging to the Nguni group of Bantu languages, and spoken by the amaNdebele (the Ndebele people of South Africa). There are two dialects of Southern Ndebele in South Africa: Northern Transvaal redirects here, see Blue Bulls for the rugby union team. ... Current distribution of Human Language Families A language family is a group of related languages said to have descended from a common proto-language. ... Map showing the distribution of Niger-Congo languages The Niger-Congo languages constitute one of the worlds major language families, and Africas largest in terms of geographical area, number of speakers, and number of distinct languages. ... Wikipedia does not yet have an article with this exact name. ... In the classification of African languages, Volta-Congo is the major branch (in terms of number of languages) of the Niger-Congo phylum. ... The Benue-Congo group of languages constitutes the largest branch of the Niger-Congo language family, both in terms of sheer number of languages, of which 938 are known (not counting mere dialects), and in terms of speakers, numbering perhaps 550 million. ... In the classification of African languages, Bantoid is a branch of the Benue-Congo subfamily of the Niger-Congo phylum. ... In the classification of African languages, Southern Bantoid (or South Bantoid) is one of the two branches of the Bantoid subfamily of the Niger-Congo phylum. ... In the classification of African languages, Narrow Bantu is a term commonly used to designate the branch of Niger-Congo containing the numerous Bantu languages as recognized by Guthrie (1948) in his seminal classification of the Bantu languages. ... ISO 639-1 is the first part of the ISO 639 international-standard language-code family. ... ISO 639-2 is the second part of the ISO 639 standard, which lists codes for the representation of the names of languages. ... ISO 639-3 is in process of development as an international standard for language codes. ... Not to be confused with the NATO phonetic alphabet, which has also informally been called the “International Phonetic Alphabet”. For information on how to read IPA transcriptions of English words, see IPA chart for English. ... Phonetics (from the Greek word φωνή, phone meaning sound, voice) is the study of the sounds of human speech. ... Unicode is an industry standard designed to allow text and symbols from all of the writing systems of the world to be consistently represented and manipulated by computers. ... This chart shows concisely the most common way in which the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is applied to represent the English language. ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... Nguni is a group of languages spoken in southern Africa including isiZulu, isiXhosa, siSwati, and isiNdebele. ... Map showing the approximate distribution of Bantu vs. ... The Ndebele people are three tribes or nations of people living in South Africa and Zimbabwe; there are three main groups of Ndebele: The Southern Transvaal Ndebele, who live around Bronkhorstspruit The Northern Transvaal Ndebele, who live in Limpopo Province (formerly Northern Transvaal or Northern Province) around the towns of...

• the Northern Transvaal Ndebele or Nrebele,
• and the Southern Transvaal Ndebele.

There is also another, separate dialect called Northern Ndebele or Matabele spoken in Zimbabwe and Botswana - see Sindebele language. The Zimbabwean Ndebele is closer to Zulu than it is to the two South-African Ndebele languages. The Matabele are a branch of the Zulus who split from King Shaka in the early 1820s under the leadership of Mzilikazi, a former general in Shakas army. ... Title page of one of the earliest Sindebele phrase books, published for the use of settlers in Matabeleland. This article relates to the Ndebele language spoken by the Ndebele or Matabele people of Zimbabwe. ... Title page of one of the earliest Sindebele phrase books, published for the use of settlers in Matabeleland. This article relates to the Ndebele language spoken by the Ndebele or Matabele people of Zimbabwe. ... Languages Zulu Religions Christian, Animist Related ethnic groups Bantu Nguni Basotho Xhosa Swazi Matabele Khoisan The Zulu (South African English and isiZulu: amaZulu) are a South African ethnic group of about 10 million people who live mainly in the province of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. ...

Overview

The first group of Southern Ndebele speakers are found in the Limpopo Province (formerly Northern Transvaal or Northern Province) of South Africa around the Towns of Mokopane (Potgietersrus) and Polokwane (Pietersburg). Unfortunately this language was never taken seriously, so it was never taught at school and neither did anyone sit down and compile a proper orthography. The language is sometimes mistakenly grouped under the Northern Sotho group of dialects. This language is becoming extinct. The new generation mostly speaks Northern Sotho. Capital Polokwane Largest city Polokwane Area  - Total Ranked 5th 123,900 km² Premier Mbhazima Shilowa (ANC) Population   - 2001   - 1996   - Density (2001) Ranked 4th 5,273,637 4,929,368 43/km² (Ranked 3rd) Languages Races Black (97. ... Flag of Transvaal For the Russian theme park, see Transvaal Park. ... Mokopane (previously called Potgietersrus) is a town in the Limpopo Province of South Africa. ... ŃPolokwane (previously known as Pietersburg) is the capital of Limpopo Province (the province with the greatest increase in growth rate for 2003) in South Africa. ... The orthography of a language specifies the correct way of writing in that language. ...

One of the Ndebele people's famous achievements is that they caught the Afrikaners by surprise and killed one of their leaders Piet Potgieter. The Afrikaners built a monument and called it "Moorddrift". As revenge the Ndebele King was killed in his cave refuge, together with a few of his followers. Afrikaners are a European ethnic group primarily associated with Southern Africa and the Afrikaans language. ...

This group is sometimes called BaTlou. If this language were to be further grouped it would be grouped with Swazi, because of their use of the root ti- as opposed to izi- for example:

• Singular nkxomo - plural tinkxomo (in Ndebele)
• Singular inkomo - plural tinkomo (in Swazi)
• Singular inkomo - plural izinkomo (in Zulu)

The second group of Ndebele speakers is found in the Mpumalanga and Gauteng Province of South Africa. This group's language was not considered notable, and for years the children were taught Zulu instead. However, the apartheid government still created a Bantustan for them called KwaNdebele, and with this came a radio station, Radio Ndebele. In the new South Africa the name of the station was changed to Ikhwekhwezi, meaning Star. This station has expanded its footprint to include the Northern Ndebele region. The language still retains most of its own vocabulary with a few Northern Sotho and Afrikaans words trickling in. Languages Zulu Religions Christian, Animist Related ethnic groups Bantu Nguni Basotho Xhosa Swazi Matabele Khoisan The Zulu (South African English and isiZulu: amaZulu) are a South African ethnic group of about 10 million people who live mainly in the province of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. ... Mpumalanga, (name changed from Eastern Transvaal on 24 August 1995), is a province in South Africa. ... Categories: South Africa stubs | Provinces of South Africa | Gauteng Province ... A segregated beach in South Africa, 1982. ... Map of the black homelands in South Africa as of 1986 Map of the black homelands in Namibia as of 1978 Bantustan is a territory designated as a tribal homeland for black South Africans and Namibians during the apartheid era. ... Flag of KwaNdebele KwaNdebele was a bantustan in South Africa, intended by the apartheid government as a semi-independent homeland for the Matabele people. ... Northern Sotho, Sepedi, or Sesotho sa Leboa, is one of the official languages of South Africa, and is spoken by 4,208,980 people (2001 Census Data), mostly in the provinces of Gauteng, Limpopo Province and Mpumalanga. ... Look up Wiktionary:Swadesh lists for Afrikaans and Dutch in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...

The Ndebele people have recently become famous for their colourful wall paintings and traditional garb. Their paintings are used for instance to attract tourists and were used to decorate tails of 15 British Airways jets as part of their ethnic art relaunch. For the 1930s airline of similar name, see British Airways Ltd. ... In 1997 British Airways adopted a new livery. ...

External links

• List links to Ndebele language resources
• The 1971 Pelling lexicon of Ndebele->English (text file) (on a stable Archive.org link)
• Searchable version of the Pelling dictionnary
• CBOLD - Comparative Bantu Online Dictionnary - including Ndebele

Internet Archive, San Francisco The Internet Archive (archive. ...

Software

• Spell checker for OpenOffice.org and Mozilla, OpenOffice.org, Mozilla Firefox web-browser, and Mozilla Thunderbird email program in Ndebele
• Project to translate Free and Open Source Software into Afrikaans