a Bantu language (Bantu languages) spoken by more than nine million people mainly in South Africa, especially in the Zululand area of KwaZulu/Natal (KwaZulu-Natal) province. The Zulu language is a member of the Southeastern, or Nguni, subgroup of the Bantu group of the Benue-Congo branch (Benue-Congo languages) of the Niger-Congo language family. Other Southeastern Bantu languages are Xhosa (Xhosa language), Swati (Swazi), Sotho, Tswana, Venda, and Ndebele. The Zulu and Xhosa languages are similar enough to be considered dialects of one language, but speakers of Zulu and Xhosa consider them to be separate languages.

Zulu has borrowed many words from other languages, especially Afrikaans (Afrikaans language) and English (English language). Its sound system contains three types of click sounds probably borrowed from speakers of Khoisan languages. Most Zulu words end in a vowel.