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.
Groote Laagte is a village in Ghanzi District of Botswana. It is located close to the Namibian border, north-west of the district capital Ghanzi. Groote Laagte has a primary school and the population was 483 in 2001 census.
East Hanahai is a village in Ghanzi District of Botswana. It is located in the central part of the district, close to the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, roughly 50 km south-east of Ghanzi. East Hanahai has a primary school and a health clinic. The building of the Trans-Kalahari Highway along its new route, rather than using the path of the old Gaborone - Ghanzi road has had a negative effect on East and West Hanahai due to the dramatic reduction in through traffic. The lack of jobs means that many members of the community rely on irregular government piece jobs and/or government food baskets. The population was 532 in 2011 census and is made up of a mixture of Basarwa (Bushmen) and Batswana.
There are numerous spellings of the name, including ǁAuǁei, ǁX’auǁ’e, and Auen. Endonyms are Juǀʼhoan(si), ǃXun in Namibia and ǂX'aoǁ'aen (predominantly in Botswana), meaning "northern people" in Naro. It also goes by the names Gobabis ǃKung and Kaukau (which can take the noun class prefixes in Tswana to give Mokaukau for one person, Bakaukau for the group and Sekaukau for the language).
The Tswana language or Setswana is spoken in Southern Africa by about five million people. It is a Bantu language belonging to the Niger–Congo language family within the Sotho-Tswana branch of Zone S (S.30), and is closely related to the Northern and Southern Sotho languages, as well as the Kgalagadi language and the Lozi language.
In Namibia, ǂKx'ao||'aetends to refer literally to the !Xuun speakers to the north in the Caprivi area. With the exception of a few cultural traits, speakers of ǂKx'ao||'aein Botswana and those of Ju|'hoan in Namibia argue that they are one and the same people, speaking one language, with some dialectal attributes.
Caprivi, or the Caprivi Strip, is a salient of Namibia which is and has been known by various names.
The non-Latin characters used by the language predominantly refer to click consonants and follow the orthography by Patrick Dickens for Juǀ'hoan.
The limited data on these dialects is poorly transcribed, but as of 2015 fieldwork is in progress.
↑ Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). "=/Kx'au//'ein". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
Further reading
Pratchett, Lee (2012) "A synchronic and historical analysis of devoicing in complex click clusters." Paper presented at Linguistisches Kolloquium, Berlin.
Pratchett, Lee (2014) "Towards an analysis of tense, aspect and modality in ǂKx’aoǁ’ae." Paper presented at Linguistisches Kolloquium, 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.
Related Research Articles
The Khoisan languages are a group of African languages originally classified together by Joseph Greenberg. Khoisan languages share click consonants and do not belong to other African language families. For much of the 20th century, they were thought to be genealogically related to each other, but this is no longer accepted. They are now held to comprise three distinct language families and two language isolates.
The San or Saan peoples, also known as the Bushmen, are members of various Khoesān-speaking indigenous hunter-gatherer groups that are the first nations of Southern Africa, and whose territories span Botswana, Namibia, Angola, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Lesotho and South Africa. There is a significant linguistic difference between the northern peoples living between the Okavango River in Botswana and Etosha National Park in northwestern Namibia, extending up into southern Angola; the central peoples of most of Namibia and Botswana, extending into Zambia and Zimbabwe; and the southern people in the central Kalahari towards the Molopo River, who are the last remnant of the previously extensive indigenous Sān of South Africa.
Omaheke is one of the fourteen regions of Namibia, its capital is Gobabis. It lies on the eastern border of Namibia and is the Western extension of the Kalahari desert. The name Omaheke is the Herero word for Sandveld.
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.
Sekele is the northern variety of the !Kung dialect continuum. It was widespread in southern Angola before the civil war, but those varieties are now spoken principally among a diaspora in northern Namibia. There are also a number of dialects spoken in Northernmost Namibia.
Naro, also Nharo, is a Khoe language spoken in Ghanzi District of Botswana and in eastern Namibia. It is probably the most-spoken of the Tshu–Khwe languages. Naro is a trade language among speakers of different Khoe languages in Ghanzi District. There exists a dictionary.
Khwe is a dialect continuum of the Khoe family of Namibia, Angola, Botswana, South Africa, and parts of Zambia, with some 8,000 speakers.
Tsoa or Tshwa, also known as Kua and Hiechware, is an East Kalahari Khoe dialect cluster spoken by several thousand people in Botswana and Zimbabwe.
!Kung (!Xun), also known as Ju, is a dialect continuum spoken in Namibia, Botswana, and Angola by the ǃKung people, constituting two or three languages. Together with the ǂʼAmkoe language, !Kung forms the Kxʼa language family. !Kung constituted one of the branches of the putative Khoisan language family, and was called Northern Khoisan in that scenario, but the unity of Khoisan has never been demonstrated and is now regarded as spurious. Nonetheless, the anthropological term "Khoisan" has been retained as an umbrella term for click languages in general.
Ghanzi is a town in the middle of the Kalahari Desert the western part of the Republic of Botswana in southern Africa. At the time of the 2011 census, there were 12,167 people living in the town with another 861 nearby. It is the administrative center of Ghanzi District and is known as the "Capital of the Kalahari". Ghanzi District measures 117,910 square kilometres and is bordered by Ngamiland to the north, Central District to the east, and Kgalagadi and Kweneg Districts to the south. Its western border is shared with Namibia to 203km.
Have shopping options in Spar, Choppis and food & stay at Kalahari Arms Hotel.
The Sotho-Tswana languages form a subgroup of Southern Bantu. It is sometimes also called "Sotho", but it is more common now to reserve "Sotho" for Sesotho or "Southern Sotho", the group of dialects spoken by the Sotho people (Basotho).
The "Western Sotho" branch or "Tswanaic" branch includes the Tswana language, spoken by the Tswana people (Batswana). In addition, Northern Sotho is a geographical grouping for dialects that are neither part of the Southern nor the Western group.
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.
Yeyi is a Bantu language spoken by many of the approximately 50,000 Yeyi people along the Okavango River in Namibia and Botswana. Yeyi, influenced by Juu languages, is one of several Bantu languages along the Okavango with clicks. Indeed, it has the largest known inventory of clicks of any Bantu language, with dental, alveolar, palatal, and lateral articulations. Though most of its older speakers prefer Yeyi in normal conversation, it is being gradually phased out in Botswana by a popular move towards Tswana, with Yeyi only being learned by children in a few villages. Yeyi speakers in the Caprivi Strip of north-eastern Namibia, however, retain Yeyi in villages, but may also speak the regional lingua franca, Lozi.
New Xade is a village located in the central part of the Ghanzi District of Botswana. The population was 930 in 2001 census.
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.
Naro Bible is a translation of the Bible into the Naro language.
Royal Johan Kxao ǀUiǀoǀoo is a Namibian politician who is serving in the Cabinet of Namibia as Deputy Minister of Marginalised People since March 2015. He was a member of Parliament as a SWAPO backbencher between 2000 and 2005, and after that a special advisor in the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister.
White people in Botswana are Botswana people whose ancestry lies within the continent of Europe, most notably the United Kingdom and the Netherlands.
