Miriam Makeba Speaks African ‘Click’ Language, Sings ‘Baxabene Oxamu’
Miriam Makeba Speaks African ‘Click’ Language, Sings ‘Baxabene Oxamu’
Miriam Makeba pronounces the alphabet in click sounds! Click consonants are frequent in her native Xhosa language, and she sings a song that uses them, 'Baxabene Oxamu'.

Xhosa is spoken as a first language by approximately 8.2 million people and by another 11 million as a second language in South Africa. It has perhaps the heaviest functional load of click consonants in a Bantu language, with one count finding that 10% of basic vocabulary items contained a click. 

It's a written language that uses the Roman alphabet!

Author, educator, musician, dancer and all around creative type. Founder of "The Happy Now" website and the online jewelry store "Silver and Sage".