The Zulu language possesses several click sounds typical of Southern African languages, not found in the rest of Africa.
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13 Facts About Zulu language
2.
The first grammar book of the Zulu language was published in Norway in 1850 by the Norwegian missionary Hans Schreuder.
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3.
The first written document in Zulu language was a Bible translation that appeared in 1883.
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4.
Zulu language was the author of Insila kaShaka, the first novel written in Zulu .
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5.
Zulu radio is very popular and newspapers such as isoLezwe, Ilanga and UmAfrika in the Zulu language are available in Kwazulu-Natal province and in Johannesburg.
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6.
Mutual intelligibility of many Nguni languages has increased the likelihood of Zulu becoming the lingua franca of the eastern half of the country.
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7.
Song Siyahamba is a South African hymn originally written in the Zulu language that became popular in North American churches in the 1990s.
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8.
Zulu language syllables are canonically CV, and words must always end in a vowel.
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9.
Stress in Zulu language words is mostly predictable and normally falls on the penultimate syllable of a word.
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10.
Zulu language is conventionally written without any indication of tone, but tone can be distinctive in Zulu language.
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11.
However, like most other Bantu languages, Zulu has word tone, meaning that the pattern of tones acts more like a template to assign tones to individual syllables, rather than a direct representation of the pronounced tones themselves.
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12.
Zulu language has tonic assimilation: high tones tend to spread allophonically to following low-tone syllables, raising their pitch to a level just below that of adjacent high-tone syllables.
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