Zulu Language Services

Zulu (Zulu: isiZulu) is the language of the Zulu people with about 10 million speakers, the vast majority (over 95%) of whom live in South Africa. Zulu is the most widely spoken home language in South Africa (24% of the population) as well as being understood by over 50% of the population (Ethnologue 2005). It became one of South Africa’s eleven official languages in 1994. Like many other Bantu languages, it is written using the Latin alphabet. The Zulu language, like other Nguni languages, is heavily influenced by the Xhosa language. English, Dutch and later Afrikaans had been the only official languages used by all South African governments before 1994. However in the Kwazulu bantustan the Zulu language was widely used. All education in the country at the high-school level was in English or Afrikaans. Since the demise of apartheid in 1994, Zulu has been enjoying a marked revival. Zulu-language television was introduced by the SABC in the early 1980s and it broadcasts news and many shows in Zulu. Zulu radio is very popular and newspapers such as isoLezwe, Ilanga and UmAfrika in the Zulu language are available, mainly available in Kwazulu-Natal province and in Johannesburg. In January 2005 the first full length feature film in Zulu, Yesterday was nominated for an Oscar. South African matriculation requirements no longer specify which South African language needs to be taken as a second language, and some people have made the switch to learning Zulu. However people taking Zulu at high-school level overwhelmingly take it as a first language: according to statistics, Afrikaans is still over 30 times more popular than Zulu as a second language. The mutual intelligibility of many Nguni languages has increased the likelihood of Zulu becoming the lingua franca of the eastern half of the country, although the political dominance of Xhosa-speaking people on national level militates against this. (The predominant language in the Western Cape and Northern Cape is Afrikaans – see the map below.) In the 1994 film The Lion King, in the “Circle of Life” song, the phrases Ingonyama nengw’ enamabala (English: A lion and a leopard come to this open place), Nants ingonyama baghiti Baba (English: Here comes a lion, Father) and Siyonqoba (English: We will conquer) were used. In some movie songs, like “This Land”, the voice says Busa leli zwe bo (Rule this land) and Busa ngothando bo (Rule with love) were used too. The song Siyahamba is a South African hymn originally written in the Zulu language that became popular in North American churches in the 1990s.