Enter one or more (space separated) words into the search field and click the "Search" button to look them up in the dictionary.

While typing, you will be shown a list of suggestions that best match your input (needs Javascript). You can click on one of the suggested words to look it up. If the word you are looking for does not appear in the list this does not necessarily mean that it is not in the dicionary.

Additionally, you can highlight characters or words in the search field with the mouse and, by releasing the mouse button, send only the selection to the dictionary while preserving the original contents of the search field (needs Javascript).

If you do not want any phonetic transcriptions to be displayed, check the "hide phonetic transcriptions" box.

To clear the search form click the "Clear" button.

The result set contains one paragraph for each dictionary entry (keyword) that matches your query. If the same keyword appears as different parts of speech, every part of speech will be listed separately.

Each paragraph begins with the keyword followed by its part of speech. Zulu entries additionally show the noun classes, the stem in parantheses and the (optional) phonetic transcriptions.

Stems are denoted by a leading dash (-). Nouns appear as "singular/plural" if both forms exist, otherwise only one form will be shown. The English plural is only shown if it is irregular. For Zulu verbs the verb stem is given.

English adjectives may translate to Zulu adjectives (very few), relatives or verbs each of which have their own sets of concords. Adjectives are marked "[adj.]" after the translation, relatives are marked "[rel.]" and verbs are marked "[v.]".

Direct Matches

These are words that exist in the dictionary as you typed them. Additionally, the dictionary engine will try to stip off prefixes and suffixes to account for derived words.

Compound Expressions

If you lookup a compound word or phrase like "big dog", "inja enkulu" or "asimbonanga", the dictionary engine will try to translate it as a whole. Note that these are literal translations that might be unsensical. It is up to you to choose a suitable translation.

The tilde (~)

The tilde character (~) is used to save space. It represents the preceding keyword. For example, under "six" you will find "~ times: kasithupha" which means that "six times" means "kasithupha" in Zulu.