It is the language of the Zulu people, with about 13.56 million native speakers, who primarily inhabit the province of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa.

Xhosa, the predominant language in the Eastern Cape, is often considered mutually intelligible with Zulu, as is Northern Ndebele.

[2] The Zulu, like Xhosa and other Nguni people, have lived in South Africa for hundreds of years.

The first grammar book of the Zulu language was published in Norway in 1850 by the Norwegian missionary Hans Schreuder.

Other notable contributors to Zulu literature include Benedict Wallet Vilakazi and, more recently, Oswald Mbuyiseni Mtshali.

Zulu-language television was introduced by the SABC in the early 1980s and it broadcasts news and many shows in Zulu.

The song Siyahamba is a South African hymn originally written in the Zulu language that became popular in North American churches in the 1990s.

For example: This situation has led to problems in education because standard Zulu is often not understood by young people.

[18] They are [ɛ] and [ɔ] otherwise: There is limited vowel length in Zulu, as a result of the contraction of certain syllables.

Recent loanwords from languages such as English may violate these constraints, by including additional consonant clusters that are not native to Zulu, such as in igremu /iːgreːmu/ "gram".

There may be some variation between speakers as to whether clusters are broken up by an epenthetic vowel or not, e.g. ikhompiyutha /iːkʰompijuːtʰa/ or ikhompyutha /iːkʰompjuːtʰa/ "computer".

When the final vowel of a word is long due to contraction, it receives the stress instead of the preceding syllable.

Thus, for any word of at least two syllables, there are two different forms, one with penultimate length and one without it, occurring in complementary distribution.

Likewise, the recent past tense of verbs ends in -ile sentence-finally, but is reduced to -ē medially.

The penultimate syllable can also bear a falling tone when it is long due to the word's position in the phrase.

[clarification needed] In principle, every morpheme has an inherent underlying tone pattern which does not change regardless of where it appears in a word.

Depressor consonants have a lowering effect on pitch, adding a non-phonemic low-tone onset to the normal tone of the syllable.

Prenasalisation occurs whenever a consonant is preceded by a homorganic nasal, either lexically or as a consequence of prefixation.

The most notable case of the latter is the class 9 noun prefix in-, which ends in a homorganic nasal.

The second syllable si assimilates to the surrounding high tones, raising its pitch, so that it is pronounced [ísípʼúːnù] sentence-finally.

The following changes occur as a result of palatalization: Zulu employs the 26 letters of the ISO basic Latin alphabet.

A common former practice was to indicate the implosive /ɓ/ using the special letter ɓ, while the digraph bh would then be simply written as b.

Some references may also write h after letters to indicate that they are of the depressor variety, e.g. mh, nh, yh, a practice that is standard in Xhosa orthography.

For example, here is a table with some words constructed from the roots -Zulu and -ntu (the root for person/people): The following is a list of phrases that can be used when one visits a region whose primary language is Zulu: The following is from the preamble to the Constitution of South Africa: Thina, bantu baseNingizimu Afrika, Siyakukhumbula ukucekelwa phansi kwamalungelo okwenzeka eminyakeni eyadlula; Sibungaza labo abahluphekela ubulungiswa nenkululeko kulo mhlaba wethu; Sihlonipha labo abasebenzela ukwakha nokuthuthukisa izwe lethu; futhi Sikholelwa ekutheni iNingizimu Afrika ingeyabo bonke abahlala kuyo, sibumbene nakuba singafani.

Translation: We, the people of South Africa, Recognise the injustices of our past; Honour those who suffered for justice and freedom in our land; Respect those who have worked to build and develop our country; and Believe that South Africa belongs to all who live in it, united in our diversity.

[27] The stories include the Tale of Uhlakanyana, a long cycle narrating the adventures of the famous Zulu trickster figure;[28] the story of the Zulu hero Usikulumi and his family;[29] the story of Usitungusohenthle who was carried away by pigeons;[30] and the legend of the mythical bird that gave milk,[31] along with an account of the very real honeyguide bird, called inhlamvu in Zulu.

[38] Some stories, like Ubongopa-Kamagadhlela,[39] feature numerous songs in Zulu, for which Callaway provides the lyrics but not the music.

In 1870, Callaway published The Religious System of the Amazulu[40] which also contains Zulu texts and English translations, including Unkulunkulu, "The Tradition of Creation,"[41] along with lengthy Zulu testimony regarding ancestor worship, dream interpretation, divination, and medicine.