Zulu or isiZulu ( isiZulu) is the language of the Zulu people. 10 million people speak Zulu, and most of them (95%) live in South Africa. It is the most common home language in South Africa, where 24% of people speak it at home. Over 50% of the population also speak and understand the language.

In 1994, it became one of South Africa's 11 official languages. Like other Bantu languages, Zulu is written using the Latin alphabet.

Where it is spoken 

Zulu belongs to the Nguni group of Bantu languages. Zulu migrants (people who move from place to place) have taken the language to other regions. There are now Zulu speakers in Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Mozambique, Malawi, and Swaziland. 

Zulu speakers in Zimbabwe speak a dialect called "Northern Ndebele language."

People who speak Xhosa can understand most Zulu. The opposite is also true: Zulu speakers can understand Xhosa. Xhosa language is the most common language spoken in the Eastern Cape of South Africa.

History 

The Zulu, Xhosa, and other Nguni people have lived in South Africa for a long time. The Zulu language has a lot of click sounds common in Southern African languages. These click sounds are not found in the rest of Africa. The Nguni people have lived together with other Southern tribes like the San and Khoi. 

Zulu and all other native Southern African languages was at first an oral language. It was not written down until missionaries came from Europe. These missionaries used the Latin alphabet to write the Zulu language. The first Zulu grammar book was published in Norway in 1850 by Hans Paludan Smith Schreuder.

The oldest document written in Zulu is a Bible from 1883. John Dube, a Zulu from Natal, wrote the first Zulu novel, Insila kaShaka, in 1933. Another important Zulu author was Reginald Dhlomo. Dhlomo wrote U-Dingane (1936), U-Shaka (1937), U-Mpande (1938), U-Cetshwayo (1952) and U-Dinizulu (1968). Other important Zulu writers are Benedict Wallet Vilakazi and Oswald Mbuyiseni Mtshali.

Before 1994, the Zulu language was controlled by the Zulu Language Board in KwaZulu-Natal. Today, the Pan South African Language Board supports the use of all 11 official languages of South Africa.

Use today 
Before 1994, the official languages of South Africa were English, Dutch, and Afrikaans. During Apartheid, Zulu was spoken commonly in the Kwazulu bantustan. All education, however, at the high school level was in English or Afrikaans.

After Apartheid ended in 1994, Zulu became one of the official languages in South Africa. The SABC first started showing Zulu-language television and news programs in the 1980s. There are many Zulu radio stations and newspapers available, mostly in the Kwazulu-Natal province and Johannesburg. The first full-length feature film in Zulu was Yesterday. It was made in 2004 and nominated for an Academy Award (Oscar).

In The Lion King movie, the "Circle of Life" song has many Zulu phrases in it. Some of these phrases are:
 Ingonyama nengw' enamabala ()
 Nants ingonyama bakithi Baba ()
 Siyo nqoba ()
Other Lion King songs also had Zulu phrases in them.

 Standard and urban Zulu 
There are two main types of Zulu. One type is called standard Zulu, and it is taught in schools. Standard Zulu is also called "deep Zulu" (). Standard Zulu is a purist language. This means that new ideas are described using words that are derived from other Zulu words.

The other type of Zulu is called urban Zulu (). Urban Zulu is the kind of Zulu spoken by people who live in cities. Urban Zulu uses loan words borrowed from other languages to describe new ideas. Most of these loan words come from English.

Some of these different words for new ideas in Standard and Urban Zulu are listed here:

These two different types of Zulu language make problems in learning and education. Young people speak urban Zulu and do not often understand standard Zulu.

 Phrases 
This is a list of phrases in Zulu.

Common place names in Zulu
Zulu place names occur in the locative form most of the time. A place name is both a preposition and a name. Changing the prefix of the place name changes the preposition.

For example, the Zulu name for Johannesburg is iGoli. The word eGoli means to/at/in/from Johannesburg. The root word Goli means "Johannesburg," but doesn't mean anything by itself in Zulu.

Most of the time, changing the i- or u- prefix to the e- prefix changes the meaning like this. In some cases, like with Durban, the name changes too.

 'Zulu' or 'isiZulu'? 
The Zulu name for the language is isiZulu. The isi- prefix means "language." (It also means other things, but here it means language.) For example, isiNgisi means English, isiXhosa means Xhosa, isiBhunu means Afrikaans, and isiJalimane means German.

When the word Zulu has a prefix that is not "isi-", it means a lot of different things. This is a table that shows how the meanings of the word changes:

Zulu words in South African English
Many Zulu words are used in South African English. Some words, like the names of local animals, are used in standard English. Impala and mamba, for example, are zulu words. Some Zulu words used in South African English are:

 Muti (from umuthi) - medicine
 Donga (from udonga) - ditch (udonga actually means 'wall' in Zulu)
 Indaba - conference (it means 'an item of news' in Zulu)
 inDuna - chief or leader
 Shongololo''' (from ishongololo'') - millipede
 Ubuntu - compassion/humanity.

Sources 
 UCLA Language Materials Project  - Zulu

References

Other websites

Ethnologue report on Zulu
Zulu phrasebook on Wikivoyage
Zulu Swadesh list of basic vocabulary words (from Wiktionary's Swadesh list appendix)

Bantu languages
Languages of South Africa