As a nation that takes great pride in its diversity, South Africa - the Rainbow Nation - has 11 official languages: Afrikaans, English, isiNdebele, isiXhosa, isiZulu, Sepedi, Sesotho, Setswana, siSwati, Tshivenda, and Xitsonga.

Sarah, Christopher, and I have tackled some keywords and phrases and assembled them into quick and easy videos to get you acquainted with three of the languages.

isiXhosa with Ilana and Xolisa

isiXhosa is spoken by the Xhosa people. Xolisa, who works at our Cape Town hotel, offered to teach me some common Xhosa words and phrases so that I could converse with some of my new friends in their native tongue.

isiXhosa is a very percussive language and there are various ‘click’ sounds that are made when speaking it. This can take some time to perfect and the ‘click’ made some isiXhosa words more difficult to pronounce than others.

My favorite new phrase is “Ndiphilile” (pronounced Nn-dip-ee-lee-lay), which means “I'm fine”.  So, when someone says “How are you?” in isiXhosa, I can simply say - “Ndiphilile.”

In 2001, isiXhosa was the mother tongue of about 17.5% of South Africa’s population.

Afrikaans with Sarah and Riaan

Over an amazing dinner in Cape Town (where I got to try springbok, an antelope indigenous to southern and western Africa) we were joined by Riann Oppelt. Riann grew up in South Africa and is currently a professor at a university in Cape Town. Riann gave Sarah a lesson in Afrikaans, which is spoken by Afrikaners.

Unlike isiXhosa, I definitely think it would have taken me a few more tries at each word to get the pronunciation right. Sarah was a natural though. Afrikaans is a very new language and it sounds a bit like Dutch or German. Have a listen and see if you don’t agree with me.

In 2001, about 13% of South Africans spoke Afrikaans as their first language.

isiZulu with Christopher and Jabulani

Jabulani, our fantastic ranger at Mkuze Falls gave Christopher a crash course in isiZulu. Around the game reserve and in Johannesburg, we will be hearing a lot of isiZulu and we all felt it wise to brush up on some key words so that we could attempt to impress those we met. Like isiXhosa, isiZulu has several ‘click’ sounds.

Christopher already seemed to have a mastery of some common words and phrases. My personal favorite Zulu phrase so far:   “Winzani, Umvobo?” or “What’s up, hippo?” which I will use to coax the hippo on safari to come out of the water for us.

In 2001, isiZulu was the native language of about 24% of South Africa's population.

Using the videos below, learn the ‘clicks’ and you will be sure to impress your friends and family with your new-found language skills.

Yanga ungaphumelela (Good luck in isiXhosa),

Learn isiXhosa with Ilana	Learn Afrikaans with Sarah	Learn isiZulu with Christopher

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