Xhosa Noun Classes
Insights | Oct. 16, 2018, 3:26 p.m. |
Xhosa is an agglutinative language, with an array of affixes (prefixes, infixes and suffixes) that are attached to root words and stems to transform their meaning and to convey grammatical information. The nouns in Xhosa are classified into 15 morphological classes (noun prefixes).
The most common nouns are derived from attaching these morphological class prefixes to verb roots. Classes 1 to 10 are pairs of singular and plural; with the odd numbered classes being singular followed by their plural complement (i.e. the next even numbered class).
Through the euphonic concord property, these morphological classes also dictate how sentences are constructed by demanding that subject nouns, object nouns, and other sentence constituents must be in agreement with them in class and number. This demand for concordial agreement is also true of verbs.
| Class | Prefix | Description | Example |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | um | Personal nouns; primarily humans (singular) | umzali (a parent) |
| 2 | aba | Plural of Class 1 | abazali (parents) |
| 1a | u | Personal proper nouns; Kinship terms; Some personal nouns; Animals; Miscellaneous |
unina (your mother) |
| 2a | oo | Plural of Class 1a | oonina (your mothers) |
| 3 | um | Exclusively non-personal; Some anatomical terms; Names of trees |
umlambo (a river) |
| 4 | imi | Plural of Class 3 |
imilambo (rivers) |
| 5 | ili | Anatomical terms, especially for paired body parts; Nouns refering to individuals of a particular ethnic group, Miscellaneous personal nouns; Words borrowed from other languages; A few animal names |
iliwa (a cliff) |
| 6 | ama | Plural of Class 5 |
amawa (cliffs) |
| 7 | isi | All languages or ways of doing things in a particular culture; Words from other languages that begin with "s"; Ordinal numbers; Certain personal nouns |
isithili (a district) |
| 8 | izi | Plural of Class 7 |
izithili (districts) |
| 9 | in | Most living things not included in Class 3; Most words from other languages; A few personal nouns; Certain nouns derived from verbs |
indlu (a house) |
| 10 | izi | Plural of Class 9 |
izindlu (houses) |
| 11 | ulu | Certain nouns derived from verbs; Miscellaneous; *Plural is Class 10 |
uluvo (a point of view) |
| 14 | ubu | Certain abstract nouns; *No plural form |
ubuthi (witchcraft [manner]) |
| 15 | uku | Equivalent to the English infinitive to or gerund -ing |
ukuthetha (to speak) |
