Southern Ndebele language

Southern Ndebele
isiNdebele sakwaNdzundza noManala
isiNdebele seSewula
Native to	South Africa
Region	Mpumalanga, Limpopo, Gauteng, North West
Ethnicity	amaNdebele
Native speakers	1.1 million (2011 census) 1.4 million L2 speakers (2002)
Language family	Niger–Congo? Atlantic–Congo Volta-Congo Benue–Congo Bantoid Southern Bantoid Bantu Southern Bantu Nguni Zunda Southern Ndebele
Writing system	Latin (Ndebele alphabet) Ndebele Braille
Signed forms	Signed Ndebele
Official status
Official language in	South Africa
Language codes
ISO 639-1	nr – South Ndebele
ISO 639-2	nbl – South Ndebele
ISO 639-3	nbl – South Ndebele
Glottolog	sout2808
Guthrie code	S.407
Linguasphere	+ 99-AUT-fj 99-AUT-fi + 99-AUT-fj

Geographical location of isiNdebele in South Africa: proportion of the population that speaks isiNdebele at home.

  0–20%

  20–40%

  40–60%

  60–80%

  80–100%

Geographical location of isiNdebele in South Africa: density of isiNdebele language speakers at home.

  <1 /km²

  1–3 /km²

  3–10 /km²

  10–30 /km²

  30–100 /km²

  100–300 /km²

  300–1000 /km²

  1000–3000 /km²

  >3000 /km²

Bilingual sign in Afrikaans and Transvaal Ndebele at the Pretoria Art Museum

isiNdebele, also known as Southern Ndebele is an African language belonging to the Mbo group of Bantu languages, spoken by the Ndebele people of South Africa.

The Southern Ndebele language and the Northern Ndebele language are not two variations of the same language. Both are Bantu languages, but Southern Ndebele is very similar to the Sotho and Tswana languages. The Northern Ndebele language has similarities to Zulu.