Teach Yourself Zulu - Book and 2 Audio CDs
Brand New Book and 2CDs
With Teach Yourself it's possible for virtually anyone to learn and experience the languages of the world, from Afrikaans to Zulu; Ancient Greek to Modern Persian; Beginner's Latin to Biblical Hebrew. Follow any of the Teach Yourself Language Courses Audiopackages at your own pace or use them as a supplement to formal courses. These complete courses are professionally designed for self-guided study, making them one of the most enjoyable and easy to use language courses you can find. Audiopackages include an instructional paperback book and two companion 60-minute audio CDs.
Prepared by experts in the language, each course begins with the basics and gradually promotes the student to a level of smooth and confident communication, including:
- Step-by-step guide to pronunciation and grammar
- Regular and irregular verb tables
- Plenty of practice exercises and answers
- Practical vocabulary and a bilingual glossary
- Clear, uncluttered, and user-friendly layout
- An exploration of the culture
- And much more
About the Zulu Language
Zulu 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.
Much like the Xhosa who had moved into South Africa during earlier waves of the Bantu migrations, the Zulu assimilated many sounds from the San and Khoi languages of the country's earliest inhabitants. This has resulted in the preservation of click consonants in Zulu and Xhosa, (the sounds are unique to Southern and Eastern Africa except for the Australian Aborigine Damin ceremonial language) despite the extinction of many San and Khoi languages.
Zulu, like all indigenous Southern African languages, was an oral language until contact with missionaries from Europe, who documented the language using the Latin alphabet. The first grammar book of the Zulu language was published in Norway in 1850 by the Norwegian missionary Hans Schreuder. The first written document in Zulu was a Bible translation that appeared in 1883. In 1901, John Dube (1871–1946), a Zulu from Natal, created the Ohlange Institute, the first native educational institution in South Africa. He was also the author of Insila kaShaka, the first novel written in isiZulu (1933). Another pioneering Zulu writer was Reginald Dhlomo, author of several historical novels of the 19th-century leaders of the Zulu nation: U-Dingane (1936), U-Shaka (1937), U-Mpande (1938), U-Cetshwayo (1952) and U-Dinizulu (1968). Other notable contributors to Zulu literature include Benedict Wallet Vilakazi and, more recently, Oswald Mbuyiseni Mtshali.
The written form of Zulu was controlled by the Zulu Language Board of KwaZulu-Natal. This board has now been disbanded and superseded by the Pan South African Language Board that promotes the use of all eleven official languages of South Africa.
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