Editing Zulu language (section)

== Geographical distribution ==
[[File:South Africa Zulu speakers density map.svg|thumb|upright=1.2|Geographical distribution of Zulu in South Africa: density, of Zulu home-language speakers. 
{{Div col|small=yes|colwidth=10em}}
{{legend|#ffffcc|&lt;1 /km<sup>2</sup>}}
{{legend|#ffeda0|1–3 /km<sup>2</sup>}}
{{legend|#fed976|3–10 /km<sup>2</sup>}}
{{legend|#feb24c|10–30 /km<sup>2</sup>}}
{{legend|#fd8d3c|30–100 /km<sup>2</sup>}}
{{legend|#fc4e2a|100–300 /km<sup>2</sup>}}
{{legend|#e31a1c|300–1000 /km<sup>2</sup>}}
{{legend|#bc0026|1000–3000 /km<sup>2</sup>}}
{{legend|#800026|&gt;3000 /km<sup>2</sup>}}
{{div col end}}]]

Zulu migrant populations have taken it to adjacent regions, especially [[Zimbabwe]], where the [[Northern Ndebele language]] ([[Northern Ndebele language|isiNdebele]]) is closely related to Zulu.

[[Xhosa language|Xhosa]], the predominant language in the [[Eastern Cape]], is often considered [[Mutual intelligibility|mutually intelligible]] with Zulu, as is [[Northern Ndebele language|Northern Ndebele]].<ref name="NorthernNdebeleBlog">NorthernNdebele.blogspot.com ''NorthernNdebele.blogspot.com''</ref><ref>{{cite conference |url=http://www.aclweb.org/anthology/C10-1115 |title=Ukwabelana – An open-source morphological Zulu corpus |last1=Spiegler|first1=Sebastian |last2=van der Spuy|first2=Andrew |last3=Flach |first3=Peter A.|date=August 2010 |publisher=Tsinghua University Press |book-title=Proceedings of the 23rd International Conference on Computational Linguistics |pages=1020 |location=Beijing, China}}</ref>

Maho (2009) lists four dialects: central KwaZulu-Natal Zulu, northern Transvaal Zulu, eastern coastal Qwabe, and western coastal Cele.<ref name="Guthrie"/>