World Language Map

Where is Xhosa spoken?

Xhosa (IsiXhosa) is an Atlantic-Congo language, spoken in South Africa, Lesotho and Botswana. The outlined area on the map shows where.

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Key

Language families (largest ten)

  • Atlantic-Congo
  • Austronesian
  • Sino-Tibetan
  • Indo-European
  • Afro-Asiatic
  • Nuclear Trans New Guinea
  • Otomanguean
  • Austroasiatic
  • Tai-Kadai
  • Pama-Nyungan

Everything else

  • All other families Smaller families, isolates and unclassified languages.
  • Point A language with no area map. The dot sits at its Glottolog position, in its family colour.

How to read the map. Each colour is a language family: a group of languages that share a common ancestor. The ten largest families have their own colour and every other family is grey. Areas are see-through, so where two languages share a place the colours mix. Tap anywhere to list every language whose area covers that spot. Areas are generalisations drawn from published atlases, many of them decades old, and cities are multilingual, so an area never says that everyone there speaks the language. A dot marks a language that has no area map. The family name is always given in words, because colour alone is hard to tell apart for some people.

Where Xhosa is spoken

Xhosa is spoken in 3 countries: South Africa, Lesotho and Botswana. The table gives the share of each country’s people who speak it, from Unicode CLDR, where CLDR has a figure.

CountryShare of populationEstimated speakers
South Africa18%10,879,668
Lesotho1%22,053
BotswanaNot givenNot given

Estimated speakers are the CLDR percentage applied to CLDR’s own population figure for the country, so they are rough. A country without a figure may still have speakers: it is listed because the language area, or Glottolog’s record, reaches it.

On the map, Xhosa is drawn as an area from Asher and Moseley 2007. The area was digitised by the Glottography project (doi:10.5281/zenodo.18613195), and the atlas is cited on the data sources page. Language areas are generalisations, and cities and borderlands are multilingual, so the outline does not mean that everyone inside it speaks Xhosa.

How many people speak Xhosa?

Wikidata gives about 8.2 million first-language speakers (ethnologue.com, 2011). It also lists about 11 million second-language speakers (ethnologue.com, 2002). These figures are approximate: they come from different sources, years and definitions of a speaker.

Status: Not endangered. Glottolog lists it as not endangered: it is still being passed on to children.

Where Xhosa sits in the language family tree

Glottolog classifies Xhosa as follows, from the largest family down to the language itself.

  1. Atlantic-Congo
  2. Volta-Congo
  3. Benue-Congo
  4. Bantoid
  5. Southern Bantoid
  6. Narrow Bantu
  7. East Bantu
  8. Southern Bantu
  9. Nuclear Southern Bantu
  10. Dimsuffix Southern Bantu
  11. Nguni-Tsonga-Copi
  12. Nguni (S.40)
  13. Nuclear Nguni
  14. Southern Ndebele-Lowland
  15. Xhosa

Related languages

Other languages in the Southern Ndebele-Lowland group:

  • Zulu (12.1 million speakers)

More about Xhosa

Codes: ISO 639-3 xho, Glottolog xhos1239. Glottolog macroarea: Africa.

Questions about Xhosa

Where is Xhosa spoken?

Xhosa is spoken in South Africa, Lesotho and Botswana. Unicode CLDR puts it at 18% of the population of South Africa, which is about 10,879,668 people. On the map it is shown as an area from Asher and Moseley 2007.

How many people speak Xhosa?

Wikidata gives about 8.2 million first-language speakers (ethnologue.com, 2011). Speaker numbers are approximate and differ between sources: counting who is a speaker, and whether to include second-language speakers, is not settled. It also lists about 11 million second-language speakers (ethnologue.com, 2002).

Which language family is Xhosa in?

Glottolog places Xhosa in the Atlantic-Congo family, in the branch Volta-Congo, Benue-Congo, Bantoid, Southern Bantoid, Narrow Bantu, East Bantu, Southern Bantu, Nuclear Southern Bantu, Dimsuffix Southern Bantu, Nguni-Tsonga-Copi, Nguni (S.40), Nuclear Nguni and Southern Ndebele-Lowland.

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