Northern Ndebele language

Many consonant sounds may result in depressed (or breathy) allophones. Alveolar consonants, t, d, and n, may have dentalized allophones of [t̪ʼ, d̪, n̪]. Consonants k and h can result in allophones of [ɣ, ɣʱ] and [ɦ].

Ndebele /t͡ʃ/ generally correspond to Zulu /ʃ/.[8]

There are five vowel phonemes, written with the letters a, e, i, o, u.

• a is pronounced [a], approximately like a in father; e.g. abantwana (children)
• e is pronounced [ɛ] or [e], sometimes like e in bed; e.g. emoyeni (in the air)
• i is pronounced [i], like ee in see; e.g. siza (help)
• o is pronounced [ɔ] or [o], sometimes approximately like o in bone; e.g. okhokho (ancestors)
• u is pronounced [u], like oo in soon; e.g. umuntu (person)

In Northern Ndebele, there are three click consonants c, q and x.

c [ǀ] is made by placing the tip of the tongue against the front upper teeth and gums, the centre of the tongue is depressed and the tip of the tongue is drawn backwards. The resulting sound is similar to the sound used in English to express annoyance.[10] Some examples are cina (end), cela (ask).[11]

The q [!] sound is made by raising the back of the tongue to touch the soft palate and touching the gums with the sides and tip of the tongue. The centre of the tongue is depressed and the tip drawn quickly away from the gum. The resulting sound is like the "pop" heard when quickly removing the cork from a bottle.[10] Some examples are qalisa (start), qeda (finish).[11]

The x [ǁ] sound is made by placing the tongue so that the back of the tongue touches the soft palate and the sides and tip of the tongue touch the gums. One side of the tongue is quickly withdrawn from the gums.[10] Some examples are xoxa (discuss), ixoxo (frog).[11]

The Northern Ndebele noun consists of two essential parts, the prefix and the stem. Using the prefixes, nouns can be grouped into noun classes, which are numbered consecutively, to ease comparison with other Bantu languages.

The following table gives an overview of Northern Ndebele noun classes, arranged according to singular-plural pairs.

¹ umu- replaces um- before monosyllabic stems, e. g. umuntu (person).

Verbs are marked with the following prefixes in agreement with the noun class of the subject and the object:

While subject agreement is obligatory, object marking is not, and only appears when the object is given in the discourse.[12] The object marker attaches closer to the verb root when it occurs (with the following notations: A - augment vowel; 1 - class 1 nominal prefix, etc; 1s - class 1 subject agreement, etc; FUT - future; 1o - class 1 object marker, etc):

U-Thabani u-za-yi-pheka i-nyama
A-1Thabani 1s-FUT-9o-cook A-9meat
"Thabani will cook the meat."[12]

There is evidence from Zulu that object markers are an evolution of pronominal clitics to be agreement markers,[13] which might also be the case for Northern Ndebele, given the linguistic similarity between the languages.