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Xhosa is a language in the Nguni group of Bantu (Guthrie S40). (Webbook)
Ethnologue lists the classification as: Niger-Congo, Atlantic-Congo, Volta-Congo, Benue-Congo, Bantoid, Southern, Narrow Bantu, Central, S, Nguni (S.40)
Xhosa is spoken in the Transkei coastal region of South Africa. (Webbook)
A map from Wikipedia showing areas where "Xhosa is spoken as a home language by a significant proportion of the population" follows (it is reproduced under a GNU Free Documentation License.):
According to Ethnologue:
Wikipedia quotes a figure of 7.9 million speakers.
According to Ethnologue:
Xhosa is one of the 11 official languages of South Africa.
Literacy rate (according to Ethnologue):
Taught in primary and secondary schools. (Ethnologue)
Xhosa has a standardized orthography that uses the unmodified Latin alphabet. It is described in the Terminology and Orthography No. 3 of 1980. [need full citation]
Xhosa has a Roman based orthography that well represents the spoken language. Xhosa also uses various combinations of graphemes to represent, for example, click sounds that cannot be adequately represented using the Roman-based orthography. (UCLA)
An earlier proposed orthography included some extended characters.
(Apparently the same as the English alphabet but for g' ?)
Geonames "Unicode test page...: Xhosa alphabet" http://www.geonames.de/alphtz.html#xho
The "Language Museum" site has short sample texts in:
Latin fonts without extended ranges (such as commonly used for English) will suffice.
An English keyboard or the South African keyboard http://translate.org.za/content/view/24/41/ can be used (verify re the English keyboard)
The South African language site "Batho Portal" http://www.sediba.org.za/ has a section on & in isiXhosa.
INKCAZO-JIKELELE NGEEMFANELO ZOLUNTU (Universal Declaration of Human Rights): http://www.unhchr.ch/udhr/lang/xos.htm
Wikipedia in Xhosa at http://xh.wikipedia.org/ (some content as of 11-2006)
The OpenOffice suite of software applications has been localized in Xhosa by Translate.org.za. See http://translate.org.za/content/view/17/54/
There is a project to translate Debian (Linux) Installer in Xhosa: https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/edgy/+source/debian-installer/+pots/debian-installer
There is an "isiXhosa Spelling Checker 1.0 & Hyphenator" for Microsoft products for sale at http://www.bowline.co.za/home.asp?pid=24&product=1096
CTexT has developed a spellchecker and hyphenator for use with Microsoft Windows. See: http://www.spel.co.za/
Translate.org.za http://Translate.org.za
Dwyer, David (1997), Webbook of African Languages, http://www.isp.msu.edu/AfrLang/hiermenu.html (page on "Xhosa," http://www.isp.msu.edu/AfrLang/Xhosa_root.html )
SIL International, Ethnologue: Languages of the World, "Xhosa," http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=xho
SIL International, "ISO 639 Code Tables," http://www.sil.org/iso639-3/codes.asp
U.S. Library of Congress, "ISO 639.2: Codes for the Representation of Names of Languages: Alpha-3 codes arranged alphabetically by the English name of language," http://www.loc.gov/standards/iso639-2/php/English_list.php
UCLA, Language Materials Project, "Xhosa (profile)," http://www.lmp.ucla.edu/Profile.aspx?LangID=21&menu=004
Wikipedia, "Xhosa language," http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xhosa_language
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