At choir practice tonight we sang a song that was originally based on this language of southern Africa. Can someone tell me how it is pronounced? Sha-sha? Ex-ha-sa?
(Note: I know that a couple of you love phonetic symbols, but please don't trouble yourselves here--I cannot comprehend them at all.)

I've usually seen it spelled Xhosa. The xh is a k followed by an alveolar lateral click. (If you go to the link you can play a sound file of it.) It's one of those African languages that has lots of click consonants in it.

You're probably right, on the spelling; I didn't think about posting about it until I was already home, and so hadn't looked that closely at it.

Edit--er, I should have said that you were right about my having spelled it incorrectly. Didn't mean to imply that I was doubting your knowledge. And, thanks for the link but my computer won't play it.

I still haven't found a site where I could listen to this particular sound, but I thought this history was interesting:

History
The name Xhosa refers to one of their legendary chieftains. The members of the ethnic group that speaks Xhosa refer to themselves as the amaXhosa and call their language isiXhosa. Almost all languages with clicks are Khoisan languages and the presence of clicks in Xhosa demonstrates the strong historical interaction with its Khoisan neighbors. The name Xhosa is Khoisan meaning "The angry men".
From answers.com

Sorry your computer doesn't play the sounds. Clicks do occur in English, they're just not phonemes like they are in Xhosa. We have the dental (alveolar) click which is usually represented by the interjection tsk when it is pronounced as a click rather than its spelling pronunciation as /'tIsk/. The lateral click in the ethnonym Xhosa is closer to our click in our giddyup sound: made closer to the sides of the mouth. This sound doesn't have a transcription that I'm aware of, but occurs twice or thrice after one says giddyup to a horse. Perhaps the most familiar click in English is the kissing sound, or bilabial click.