ǂ’Amkoe, formerly called by the dialectal name ǂHoan (Eastern ǂHȍã, ǂHûân, ǂHua, ǂHû, or in native orthography ǂHȍȁn), is a severely endangered Kx'a language of Botswana. West ǂ’Amkoe, Taa (or perhaps the Tsaasi dialect of Taa), and Gǀui form the core of the Kalahari Basin sprachbund, and share a number of characteristic features, including some of the largest consonant inventories in the world. ǂ’Amkoe was shown to be related to the Juu languages by Honken and Heine (2010), and as a result was classified along with the !Kung language in the Kx'a language group.[3]
Botswana, officially the Republic of Botswana, is a landlocked country in Southern Africa. Formerly the British protectorate of Bechuanaland, Botswana adopted its new name after becoming independent within the Commonwealth on 30 September 1966. Since then, they maintain a tradition of stable representative republic, with a consistent record of uninterrupted democratic elections and the best perceived corruption ranking in Africa since at least 1998. It is currently Africa's oldest continuous democracy.
Taa, also known as ǃXóõ, is a Tuu language notable for its large number of phonemes, perhaps the largest in the world. Most speakers live in Botswana, but a few hundred live in Namibia. The people call themselves ǃXoon or ʼNǀohan, depending on the dialect they speak. The Tuu languages are one of the three traditional language families that make up the Khoisan languages.
ǂ’Amkoe is moribund and severely endangered. There are only a few dozen native speakers, most born before 1960 (one Sasi speaker was born in 1971, one N!aqriaxe speaker in 1969), many of whom no longer speak the language fluently. The first language of the younger generations, and even of many older, native speakers who no longer speak ǂ’Amkoe well, is Gǀui, a Khoe language, in the case of N!aqriaxe; Kgalagadi, a Bantu language that is the local lingua franca, in the case of ǂHoan; and the Ngwato dialect of Tswana, in the case of Sasi.
A first language, native language or mother/father/parent tongue, is a language that a person has been exposed to from birth or within the critical period. In some countries, the term native language or mother tongue refers to the language of one's ethnic group rather than one's first language. Children brought up speaking more than one language can have more than one native language, and be bilingual or multilingual. By contrast, a second language is any language that one speaks other than one's first language.
Gǀui or Gǀwi is a Khoe dialect of Botswana with 2,500 speakers. It is part of the Gǁana dialect cluster, and is closely related to Naro. It has a number of loan words from ǂʼAmkoe. Gǀui, ǂʼAmkoe, and Taa form the core of the Kalahari Basin sprachbund, and share a number of characteristic features, including extremely large consonant inventories.
The Khoe languages are the largest of the non-Bantu language families indigenous to southern Africa. They were once considered to be a branch of a Khoisan language family, and were known as Central Khoisan in that scenario. Though Khoisan is now rejected as a family, the name is retained as a term of convenience.
Dialects
ǂ’Amkoe [ǂ̃ˀām̄kòè] is spoken in three areas in southeastern Botswana, corresponding to three dialects. Recent surveys found the following locations:
Sasi ([sààsī] or [sààsí]) is spoken further east, between Kweneng District and the South African border, in the villages of Dibete, Poloka, and a few nearby villages not found on maps.
Kweneng is one of the districts of Botswana and is the recent historical homeland of the Bakwena people, the first group in Botswana converted to Christianity by famed missionary David Livingstone. Various landmarks, including Livingstone's Cave, allude to this history. The seat of the district's government is Molepolole, Botswana's most populous village.
Dutlwe is a village in Kweneng District of Botswana. The population of Dutlwe was 1,055 in 2011 census.
Salajwe is a village in Kweneng District of Botswana. It is located in central Botswana, in Kalahari Desert, 70 km north-west of Letlhakeng. The population of Salajwe was 1,705 in 2001 census.
Nǃaqriaxe and ǂHoan are closest, collectively referred to as West ǂ’Amkoe; Sasi is referred to as East ǂ’Amkoe.
There are some phonological differences between the Nǃaqriaxe spoken around Dutlwe and that spoken around Motokwe and Khekhenye. Sasi is a "mutually intelligible language" with differences in phonology and lexicon.[4] There have been no systematic studies of Sasi, in 2015, Collins was engaged in fieldwork. The East and West populations had no knowledge of each other, but when brought together in 1996, they were able to communicate, and found the differences amusing.[5]
Recent scholars such as Collins, Gruber, Köhler, and Güldemann restrict the name ǂHoan to the ǂHoan dialect, and call the language as a whole ǂ’Amkoe, which means "person" in all dialects. Almost all linguistic work has been on the ǂHoan and Nǃaqriaxe dialects.
ǂHoan has gone by the names and spellings Eastern ǂHoan, ǂHùã, ǂHũa, ǂHṍã, ǂHoang de Dutlwe. It has been specified as Eastern ǂHoan to distinguish it from Western ǂHuan, a dialect of the unrelated Taa language.[6] Sasi has gone by Sàsí, Tshasi, Tshasi de Khutse. Tshasi is a Tswana name that is more precise than the generic Masarwa "Bushman". The disambiguator de Khutse is used to distinguish it from a variety of Taa also called Tshase and Sase. The name of the third dialect is nǃàqrīāχè [ǃ̃àˤɾīāχè] or àqrīāχè [ʔàˤɾīāχè] in ǂ’Amkoe.
All Nǃaqriaxe speakers are bilingual in Gǀui, with some Kgalagadi as well. ǂHoan speakers are bilingual in Kgalagadi, and Sasi speakers in the Ngwato dialect of Tswana. The ǂ’Amkoe language shows evidence that it previously had extensive contact with Taa. Superimposed on this are Gǀui features such as a shift of alveolar consonants to palatal, even in ǂHoan, which is not currently in contact with Gǀui.
Phonology
ǂ’Amkoe has bilabial clicks, which are found in only two other living languages.[7] It has been in intense contact with Gǀui and previously with Taa, and some of the sounds of ǂ’Amkoe appear to have been borrowed from Gǀui. On the other hand, the moribund state of the language is apparent in its phonology, and sounds not found in Gǀui appear to have been lost by many of the remaining speakers.
The bilabial clicks are a family of click consonants that sound something like a smack of the lips. They are found as phonemes only in the small Tuu language family, in the Hadza language of Tanzania, in the ǂHõã language of Botswana, and in the extinct Damin ritual jargon of Australia. However, bilabial clicks are found paralinguistically for a kiss in various languages, and as allophones of labial–velar stops in some West African languages, as of /mw/ in some of the languages neighboring Shona, such as Ndau and Tonga.
Vowels
Nǃaqriaxe vowel qualities are /i e a o u/. The front vowels, /i e/, are very similar in formant space, as are even more so the back vowels, /o u/, but minimal pairs distinguish them. Vowels may be nasalized, pharyngealized (written with a final ⟨q⟩ in the practical orthography), or glottalized. Gerlach (2015) treats long vowels as sequences, in which the nasalized vowels, /ĩ ã ũ/, occur phonemically only as V2, while the pharyngealized and glottalized vowels, /aˤ oˤ/ and /aˀ oˀ uˀ/ (and, in one loan word, /iˀ/) occur only as V1. A vowel at V1 will be phonetically nasalized if V2 is nasal, though combinations of glottalized or pharyngealized plus nasalized vowels are not common. Some speakers glottalize pharyngeal vowels, but inconsistently, and it does not appear to be distinctive. Breathy vowels occur after aspirated consonants and with some speakers at the ends of utterances. Neither case is phonemic. They may also occur on some words with low tone. Not all words with low tone are attested with breathy vowels, but the feature does not appear to be distinctive (there are no minimal pairs), and so Gerlach (2015) does not treat breathy vowels as phonemic. /o/ is a diphthong [oa] before final /m/ (that is, in words of the shape Com), but it carries only a single tone, and so is analyzed as an allophone of a single /o/ vowel. This diphthongization occurs in all three dialects, and also in Gǀui, which probably got it from ǂ’Amkoe.
Honken (2013), which is based on Gruber (1973), says the ǂHȍã qualities, also /a e i o u/, may be modal, breathy, laryngealized, or pharyngealized, and that all may be nasalized.
In words of the shape CVV, attested vowel sequences (considering only vowel quality) are aa, ee, ii, oo, uu, ai, ui, eo, oa, ua. Basically, vowel one is normally /a/ or /o/; an /o/ becomes /u/ before a high vowel two (such as /i/), while an /a/ becomes /e/ or /i/ consonant one is dental/palatal or if vowel two is high. These patterns may be an influence of |Gui (Honken 2013).
Tone
Tone is difficult to analyze in ǂ’Amkoe, due to the confounding effect of consonants and vowel phonation. Gerlach (2015) analyzes Nǃaqriaxe as having three phonemic tones: low, mid, and high. CVV, CVN, and CVCV words have two tones, but only six combinations are found: a word may have a level tone or go up or down between adjacent tones, but *low>high and *high>low are not attested, and the only falling tone is mid>low. All word tones end in a phonetically falling component in Gerlach's data, perhaps an effect of utterance-final prosody. The system is very similar to that of Gǀui, Gerlach's analysis was based on data from a single speaker who speaks more Gǀui than ǂ’Amkoe and who lacks ǂ’Amkoe consonants not found in Gǀui, so it's not clear that the results are representative of ǂ’Amkoe as a whole.
The tones analyzed as rising phonemically are phonetically dipping (falling-rising). Voiced and aspirated consonants are tone depressors, with high tone at the level of mid after a tenuis or glottalized consonant, and mid at the level of low. (However, the endpoint of low>mid tone does not change, and so effectively becomes low>high.) Aspirated consonants (and especially delayed-aspirated clicks) have an additional depressive effect at the beginning of the tone, so that they are phonetically rising; the contour, however, is a sharp rise at the beginning, rather than the slow descent with a sharp rise at the end of the phonemically rising tones.
Collins (2012) describes six word tones for ǂHȍã dialect: extra high, high>mid (high level), mid>low (mid level), high>low, low>mid, and low level. The extra high tones mostly occurs on high vowels, /i u/, which have an allophonic pitch-raising effect, which low level occurs after voiced consonants, which have a tone depressor effect. Given that Collins did not control for initial consonants in his analysis, his description is consistent with Gerlach's for Nǃaqriaxe dialect.
Consonants
Gerlach (2012)[8] reports different consonant inventories for different speakers of Nǃaqriaxe dialect: A smaller one, similar to that of the neighboring Gǀui language and to previous accounts, is used by most speakers, including those who speak more Gǀui than ǂ’Amkoe. A larger inventory is believed to be more conservative, with pre-voiced consonants cognate to those of the related Ju languages and therefore perhaps dating back to proto-Kx'a, but lost under Gǀui influence as the language became moribund. (These additional consonants are shaded in the table below.) Similar consonants are found in the neighboring Taa language; it is not clear if they date to proto-Tuu, and perhaps an earlier era of contact, or if Taa might have gotten them from ǂ’Amkoe.
The egressive consonants found in word-initial (C1) position in lexical words are as follows. Those in parentheses are only found in loan words. Those with a shaded background are only used by speakers Gerlach (2015) believes are conservative:
Non-click consonants found in C1 position in lexical words
The shaded consonants have a voiced hold and voiceless release, [dsʰ, dsʼ, ɡkʼ, ɢχʼ, dsqχʼ]. Gerlach (2015) analyses the change of voicing as being a phonetic detail due to the nature of the release rather than being phonemically prevoiced. The post-alveolar affricates (/tʃ/ etc.) are conflated with the alveolar affricates (/ts/ etc.) in N!aqriaxe dialect. They are probably an old distinction that's been loast in N!aqriaxe. Where they do occur, they may be alveolo-palatal ([tɕ], etc.), depending on speaker and location. /χ, tsχ, cχ/ appear to be only found in Gǀui loans. Sasi has /qʼ/ rather than the /qχʼ/ of ǂHoan and N!aqriaxe, though Sasi /qʼ/ is sometimes slightly affricated. (The same pattern holds for Sasi contour clicks with /qʼ/.) A contrastive /qʼ/ was reported by Gruber (1975) from a word or two in ǂHoan dialect, but could not be confirmed in N!aqriaxe, and cross-linguistic comparison gives reason to believe that /qʼ/ and /qχʼ/ are the same consonant.
/dz/ frequently appears as a fricative ([z] or further back). /c/ and /ɟ/ have a slightly fricated release, [cᶜ̧] or [kᶜ̧] etc., and aspirated /cʰ/ is distinguished primarily in the frication being longer than for /c/. /q/ ([qᵡ]) is similar, and [qχʼ] might be better analyzed as /qʼ/. It is sometimes pronounced as a lateral /q̠ʼ/, though not as commonly as in Gǀui. /k/ is not found in many lexical words apart from loans, but does occur in some highly frequent grammatical words. /χ/ is rare, and may be restricted to loans (this is not yet clear). Glottal stop [ʔ] could be argued to be epenthetic on an onsetless syllabel rather than phonemic.
Consonants found in word-medial (C2) position are /b/ (often [β]), /m, n, ɾ/; the phonemic status of medial [w] in one word is unclear. /ŋ/ is rare, found word-finally in a few loanwords. An additional consonant, /j/, is found as the first consonant of some grammatical markers.
The palatal series, which is most developed in ǂHȍã dialect, derive historically from dental consonants. This appears to be a regional influence from Gǀui, where it has also happened in some dialects more than other. Among ǂ’Amkoe dialects, there has been no palatalization in Sisa (/n d t tʰ tʼ tχ tqχʼ/), palatalization of most alveolar consonants in Nǃaqriaxe (/ɲ ɟ c cʰ cʼ tχ tqχʼ/), and full palatalization in ǂHoan (/ɲ ɟ c cʰ cʼ cχ cqχʼ/). The shift of /n/ > /ɲ/ only took place in lexical words; in grammatical words, only /n/ is found.
/h/ is frequently a voiced (murmured) [ɦ], and has been described as being "absorbed" into the following vowel.
Clicks
Like the Tuu languages, with which it was previously classified, ǂ’Amkoe has five click "types": bilabial, dental, alveolar, palatal, and lateral alveolar. There are 14 to 19 "accompaniments" (combinations of manner, phonation, and contour), depending on the speaker. As with non-clicks, the difference is in whether the speaker retains pre-voiced clicks like those found in the Ju languages and Taa. The result is 68 to 77 click consonants. (Theoretically, the numbers may be 70 and 95, as several clicks shown here were unattested in Gerlach 2012 but have since proven to be accidental gaps, and some or all of the gaps below are likely to be accidental as well. This is especially so considering that the pre-voiced clicks are attested from only a single speaker, for whom extensive data is not available, and that the delayed-aspirated series has not been reported from ǂHoan.) Gerlach (2015) finds the following inventory, considering N!aqriaxe and ǂHoan dialects:
The unusual distinction between glottalized and ejective clicks is similar to that found in Gǀui. A near minimal set is ǁʼòò 'warm', ᵑǁʔōō 'hard', ǁqʼòò 'to stink'. It has not been reported from ǂHoan, but this is likely to have been an oversight. The ejective clicks are not prenasalized between vowels, while the glottalized clicks, and clicks with delayed aspiration, are. Voicing of the voiced uvular clicks is variable. They are sporadically prenasalized, even in initial position, which many investigators believe is due to the difficulty of maintaining the voicing.
Like /χ/ etc. above, the plain click affricates /ʘχ, ǀχ, ǁχ, ǃχ, ǂχ/ appear to be found only in Gǀui loans.
With the voiceless aspirated clicks, voicing starts partway through the aspiration, [ǃʰʱ], so the voice-onset time is not as long as that of the glottalized clicks. With the voiced aspirated clicks, the aspiration is generally voiced throughout, but voicing decreases during the hold of the click, and the release itself is voiceless, unlike the release of modally voiced clicks. (That is, these are better described as pre-voiced aspirated clicks.) For the clicks with delayed aspiration, the aspiration is quite long, starting out weak and increasing in intensity with time (unlike the aspiration of the simple aspirated clicks, which starts out strong and decreases in intensity). When the click is in utterance-initial position, there is no voicing in the hold or in the aspiration. However, when the click occurs after a vowel, it is nasal throughout the hold, ending just before the release, but with voicing continuing though the release and throughout the aspiration: [!˭ʰ] vs [ŋ͡nǃ̬ʱʱ]. The preglottalized clicks have a much shorter voice lead (negative VOT) than the plain nasal clicks, sometimes hardly audible.
Phonotactics
A lexical word is typically of the shapes CVV (69% in Nǃaqriaxe dialect), CVN (8%), or CVCV (22%, often loans from Gǀui), with two tone-bearing units. (Only 1% of words are CVCVCV, CVVCV, CVVVCV, and other complex patterns.) The N may only be /m/ in native words, though final /n/ occurs in loans. Gerlach (2015) believes that the CVV and CVN patterns derive historically from *CVCV through loss of C2 (such as a medial /l/ in related languages) or V2 in all cases, not just those that can be shown.
In lexical words, most consonants occur in C1 position, but only /b m n r/ occur in C2 position. /ɾ/ may be realized as [d] or [l], and /b/ may be realized as [β]. (A few words have a third-position consonant, CVCVCV or CVVCV. These include /b m r l k q ts s/, and may be a fossilized suffixes.) /w/? occurs as C2 in one word, /kawa/ 'bag', but its analysis is uncertain - the word may be /kaua/, with a CVVV structure, and perhaps a loan. /m n ɾ/ do not occur in C1 position except in loanwords. Initial /ɾ/ may be a trill [r] when it is a trill in the source language. /b/ occurs as C1 in only a few native words, /ɲ/ (C1 only) is rare, and final /ŋ/ is only found in loans. /j/ does not occur in lexical words, except for some speakers as the realization of /ɲ/.
In grammatical words, the word shape is usually CV, sometimes CVV (generally shortening to CV in rapid speech), or, in two cases, N (both /m/ and /n/). Attested consonants in grammatical words are /ʔ j w m n k q s h ᵑǀ ᵑǃ ˀᵑǁ ǀʰ ǁ/. Of these, /j w m n/ do not occur as C1 in lexical words, while /ʔ k/ are rare. Thus there is a strong tendency for some consonants to mark the beginning of a lexical word, and for others to start grammatical words. (Though /w/ may be realized as [β] and might be phonemically /b/.) In grammatical words, clicks are mostly found in CVV and CVq (pharyngealized) syllables, though there is a plural suffix -/ᵑǀe/. /h/ is sometimes pharyngealized to [ħ] in suffixes. At least /χ, l, k, s, c/ occur as C2 in loan words.
Grammar
ǂHõã is an SVO subject–verb–object language (see examples in Collins 2001, 2002, 2003). The SVO word order of ǂHõã typical of the Kx'a and Tuu language families. ǂHõã has nominal postpositions used for locative relations (see Collins 2001), and the possessor precedes the head noun.
ǂHõã grammar is characterized by a number of features common to the Kx'a and Tuu languages. First there is an intricate system of nominal plurality and verbal pluractionality. Second, there is a system of verbal compounds. Third, there is a general-purpose preposition (referred to as the "linker" in Collins 2003) which appears between post-verbal constituents.
Bibliography
Bell, Arthur and Chris Collins. 2001. "ǂHoan and the Typology of Click Accompaniments in Khoisan", in Cornell Working Papers in Linguistics, vol. 18, pp.126–153.
Collins, Chris & Jeff Gruber. 2013. A Grammar of ǂHȍã with Vocabulary, Recorded Utterances and Oral Texts. (Quellen zur Khoisan-Forschung). Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag.
Collins, Chris. 2003. The Internal Structure of VP in Ju|'hoan and ǂHoan. Studia Linguistica 57.1, pp.1–25.
Collins, Chris. 2002. Multiple Verb Movement in ǂHoan. Linguistic Inquiry 33.1, pp.1–29.
Collins, Chris. 2001. Aspects of Plurality in ǂHoan. Language 77.3, pp.456–476.
Gerlach, Linda (2015) "Phonetic and phonological description of the Nǃaqriaxe variety of ǂ’Amkoe and the impact of language contact". PhD dissertation, Humboldt University, Berlin
Gruber, Jeffrey S. 1975. Plural Predicates in ǂHòã. In Bushman and Hottentot Linguistic Studies, A.S.I. Communication 2, ed. Anthony Traill, 1-50. University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg: African Studies Institute.
Gruber, Jeffrey S. 1975. Bushman Languages of the Kalahari: ǂHòã - Vocabulary -Stems, ǂHòã - Vocabulary - Recorded Utterances. Technical Project Report to the National Endowment for the Humanities, Washington, D.C.
Gruber, Jeffrey S. 1975. Collected Field Notes. (Published in Collins & Gruber 2013)
Gruber, Jeffrey S. 1973. ǂHòã Kinship Terms. Linguistic Inquiry 4, pp.427–449.
Traill, Anthony. 1979. Phonetic Diversity in the Khoisan Languages. In Bushman and Hottentot Linguistic Studies, ed. J.W. Snyman, 167-189. University of South Africa, Pretoria.
Traill, Anthony. 1973. N4 or S7: Another Bushman Language. African Studies 32: 25–32.
Traill, Anthony. 1973. Westphal on "N4 or S7?": A Reply. African Studies 33: 249–255.
Related Research Articles
In phonetics, aspiration is the strong burst of breath that accompanies either the release or, in the case of preaspiration, the closure of some obstruents. In English, aspirated consonants are allophones in complementary distribution with their unaspirated counterparts, but in some other languages, notably most Indian and East Asian languages, the difference is contrastive, while in Arabic and Persian, all stops are aspirated.
Tone is the use of pitch in language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning – that is, to distinguish or to inflect words. All verbal languages use pitch to express emotional and other paralinguistic information and to convey emphasis, contrast, and other such features in what is called intonation, but not all languages use tones to distinguish words or their inflections, analogously to consonants and vowels. Languages that do have this feature are called tonal languages; the distinctive tone patterns of such a language are sometimes called tonemes, by analogy with phoneme. Tonal languages are common in East and Southeast Asia, the Pacific, Africa, and the Americas; as many as seventy percent of world languages may be tonal.
Pharyngealization is a secondary articulation of consonants or vowels by which the pharynx or epiglottis is constricted during the articulation of the sound.
Nǁng or Nǁŋǃke, commonly known by the name of its dialect Nǀuu (Nǀhuki), is a moribund Tuu (Khoisan) language once spoken in South Africa. It is no longer spoken on a daily basis, as the speakers live in different villages. The dialect name ǂKhomani is used for the entire people by the South African government, but the descendents of ǂKhomani-dialect speakers now speak Khoikhoi. As of January 2013, only three speakers of the Nǀuu dialect and two of the ǁʼAu dialect remain.
Juǀʼhoan, also known as Southern or Southeastern !Kung, is the southern variety of the !Kung dialect continuum, spoken in northeastern Namibia and the Northwest District of Botswana. Several regional dialects are distinguished: Epukiro, Tsumkwe, Rundu, Omatako and ǂKxʼauǁʼein, with Tsumkwe being the best described. The name "Juǀʼhoan" may be used specifically for the Tsumkwe dialect, though speakers of all dialects identify themselves as Juǀʼhoansi.
The Tlingit language is spoken by the Tlingit people of Southeast Alaska and Western Canada. It is a branch of the Na-Dene language family. Extensive effort is being put into revitalization programs in Southeast Alaska to revive and preserve the Tlingit language and culture.
Like many other languages, English has wide variation in pronunciation, both historically and from dialect to dialect. In general, however, the regional dialects of English share a largely similar phonological system. Among other things, most dialects have vowel reduction in unstressed syllables and a complex set of phonological features that distinguish fortis and lenis consonants. Most dialects of English preserve the consonant and many preserve, while most other Germanic languages have shifted them to and : compare English will and then with German will[vɪl](listen) ('want') and denn[dɛn](listen) ('because').
Mongsen Ao is a member of the Ao languages, a branch of the Sino-Tibetan languages, predominantly spoken in central Mokokchung district of Nagaland, northeast India. Its speakers see the language as one of two varieties of a greater "Ao language," along with the prestige variety Chungli Ao.
This article describes the phonology of the Somali language.
The Tuu languages, or Taa–ǃKwilanguages, are a language family consisting of two language clusters spoken in Botswana and South Africa. The relationship between the two clusters is not doubted but is not close. The name Tuu comes from a word for "person" common to both branches of the family.
This article is about the sound system of the Navajo language. The phonology of Navajo is intimately connected to its morphology. For example, the entire range of contrastive consonants is found only at the beginning of word stems. In stem-final position and in prefixes, the number of contrasts is drastically reduced. Similarly, vowel contrasts found outside of the stem are significantly neutralized. For details about the morphology of Navajo, see Navajo grammar.
The phonology of Burmese is fairly typical of a Southeast Asian language, involving phonemic tone or register, a contrast between major and minor syllables, and strict limitations on consonant clusters.
The Kukuya language, Kikukuya[kìkýkçȳā], also transcribed Kukẅa and known as Southern Teke, is a member of the Teke dialect continuum of the Congolese plateau. It is known for being the only language claimed to have a phonemic labiodental nasal. The name comes from the word kuya "plateau".
Ekoka !Kung or Western !Xuun is a variety of the !Kung dialect cluster, spoken originally in the area of the central Namibian–Angolan border, west of the Okavango River, but since the Angolan Civil War also in South Africa.
Nasal clicks are click consonants pronounced with nasal airflow. All click types have nasal variants, and these are attested in four or five phonations: voiced, voiceless, aspirated, murmured, and—in the analysis of Miller (2011)—glottalized.
Glottalized clicks are click consonants pronounced with closure of the glottis. All click types have glottalized variants. They are very common: All of the Khoisan languages of Africa have them, as does Dahalo and the Bantu languages Yeyi and Xhosa. To pronounce them, you make a glottal stop, which stops the flow of air, and then use the front of your tongue to make the click sound in the middle of the glottal stop.
This article is about the phonology and phonetics of the Slovene language.
↑ Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). "Amkoe". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
↑ Amanda Miller, 2011. "The Representation of Clicks". In Oostendorp et al. eds., The Blackwell Companion to Phonology., p. 417
↑ Gerlach, Linda, 2012. "Two speakers, two systems: phonetic or phonological variation in ǂHoan", Beiträge Sommersemester 2012, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
