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Language code: nr

Technical information about ISO 639 language code nr

Documentation

The table below provides technical details for the South Ndebele language, designated by the nr code from the ISO 639-1 standard.

Code

nr

Name

Official

South Ndebele

Native

IsiNdebele

Family
Bantu
Text direction

Left-to-Right

Language varieties
Transvaal Ndebele (Southern Ndebele proper)Sumayela Ndebele
Related languages
ZuluXhosaNorthern NdebeleSwati
Key facts
Uses Latin script with digraphs such as hl, tl and dl for aspirated lateral affricatesRetains a full Bantu noun-class agreement system across verbs, adjectives and pronounsTone is phonemic and can distinguish tense, aspect and negationContains a small set of click consonants, borrowed mainly through contact with other Nguni languagesOriginated from 17th-century Nguni military settlements mixing with Sotho-Tswana communities, creating a unique lexical blend.
Sample phrase

Sawubona, unjani?

Character encodings

UTF-8, UTF-16, UTF-32

Supported in Localizely

South Ndebele belongs to the Niger-Congo language family, specifically to the Bantu subgroup. It is one of the official languages of South Africa and is written using the Latin script (Ndebele alphabet). It is estimated that there are more than 1 million speakers worldwide.

Language presence globally

Speakers

South Africa

1.1M

*The graph shows a rough estimate of South Ndebele speakers in countries where it is an official or minority language.

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