Mandela was born in the Eastern Cape, the homeland of many Xhosa speakers. Xhosa, pronounced KAW-suh
(-k as in king, -aw as in law, -uh as "a" in sofa, stressed syllables
shown in upper case) in English, is one of South Africa's 11 official
languages and one of 28 languages spoken in the country.
Like Mandarin and Zulu, Xhosa is a tone language and the
pitch of a syllable (high or low in the case of Xhosa) is used to
differentiate the meaning of words, just as the consonant sounds -k and
-s are used to differentiate the words "king" and "sing" in English.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-magazine-monitor-25356745
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