Zulu (language) (or isiZulu), Bantu language with 10.7 million speakers in South Africa in 2001. The majority of Zulu speakers, called Zulu, live in South Africa’s KwaZulu Natal province, but Zulu is spoken throughout South Africa, including 1.9 million speakers in Gauteng province. Zulu is one of the 11 official languages of South Africa and is widely used in the media and daily life, as well as at all levels of education. It is also spoken in the nearby countries of Botswana, Lesotho, Swaziland, Malawi, and Mozambique, and is taught at universities and language schools throughout the world.

Zulu is part of the Nguni group of Bantu languages (see Niger-Congo Languages) and is most closely related to Xhosa, Swati, and Ndebele. The earliest written Zulu texts and grammatical descriptions date from the mid-19th century.

Zulu has 5 vowels and a rich consonant system, in which up to 40 consonants can be phonetically distinguished, including 3 click sounds (represented in the orthography as c, q, and x). Early Zulu speakers adopted these click sounds from speakers of Khoisan languages living in southern Africa during an extended period of contact when Bantu-speaking people first arrived in the area. Zulu has two tones (high and low) with both lexical and grammatical significance, however, tones are not represented in the orthography.

Like many Bantu languages, Zulu has an elaborated system of morphologically marked noun classes, which are numbered for reference. In phrases, dependent nominals (adjectives, numerals, possessives, for example) show class agreement with their head noun, and in sentences, verbs may show class agreement with subjects and objects:

The example shows the class 2 markers aba-/ba- showing agreement with the noun abantwana, “children” (itself marked with the noun-class prefix aba-), as well as the class 11 object agreement marker lu- agreeing with ubisi, “milk”. Verbs are morphologically complex, incorporating both derivational and inflectional affixes, such as the disjunctive marker (DIS) ya- and the tense marker (TNS) -a in the example above. Although the word order in Zulu is basically subject-verb-object, many other orders are possible, as in most cases subject and object functions can be recovered from the verbal agreement. (See also Morphology.)

Zulu has a rich tradition of literature, both oral and, more recently, written. Traditional literature includes oral poetry, for example praise songs (izibongo), which use a rich poetic language of metaphors and special grammatical constructions. Contemporary literature includes poetry, fiction, and drama. In addition, there are a number of Zulu newspapers and magazines, as well as radio and television programmes.