About 500 AD, some Bantu people moved into South Africa. They spoke their own West African language, Bantu, of course. But after they settled down in South Africa, they learned a lot of new words from the Khoisan people who lived there, who spoke a language called !Kung.


Somebody speaking Xhosa

So new languages came out of mixing these two languages together. Xhosa is one of those languages, and another one is called Zulu. One famous modern Xhosa speaker was Nelson Mandela.

Xhosa
!Kung
Swahili
Yoruba
African languages and literature
Early Africa
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