Hadza language

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Hadza
Hazane
Native to Tanzania
RegionSingida region, southeast of Lake Eyasi, camps south and northwest; Manyara region, Iramba and Mbulu districts; Shinyanga region, Masawa District.
Ethnicity1,2001,300 Hazabee (2012 census) [1]
Native speakers
1,000+ (2012) [1]
Language codes
ISO 639-3 hts
Glottolog hadz1240
ELP Hadza
Glottopedia Hadza [2]
Hadza map.svg
Distribution of the Hadza language (dark grey) in Tanzania
Lang Status 80-VU.svg
Hadza is classified as Vulnerable by the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger
This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA.

Hadza is a language isolate spoken along the shores of Lake Eyasi in Tanzania by around 1,000 Hadza people, who include in their number the last full-time hunter-gatherers in Africa. It is one of only three languages in East Africa with click consonants. Despite the small number of speakers, language use is vigorous, with most children learning it, but UNESCO categorizes the language as vulnerable. [3]

Contents

Name

The Hadza go by several names in the literature. Hadza itself means "human being." Hazabee is the plural, and Hazaphii means "they are men." Hatza and Hatsa are older German spellings. The language is sometimes distinguished as Hazane, "of the Hadza".[ citation needed ]

Tindiga is from Swahili watindiga "people of the marsh grass" (from the large spring in Mangola) and kitindiga (their language). Kindiga is apparently a form of the same from one of the local Bantu languages, presumably Isanzu.[ citation needed ]Kangeju (pronounced Kangeyu) is an obsolete German name of unclear origin. Wahi (pronounced Vahi) is the German spelling of the Sukuma name for either the Hadza west of the lake, or perhaps a Sukuma clan that traces its ancestry to the Hadza.[ citation needed ]

Classification

Hadza is a language isolate. [4] It was once classified by many linguists as a Khoisan language, along with its neighbour Sandawe, primarily because they both have click consonants. However, Hadza has very few proposed cognates with either Sandawe or the other putative Khoisan languages, and many of the ones that have been proposed appear doubtful. The links with Sandawe, for example, are Cushitic loan words, whereas the links with southern Africa are so few and so short (usually single consonant–vowel syllables) that they are most likely coincidental. A few words link it with Oropom, which may itself be spurious; the numerals itchâme/it͡ʃʰaame/ "one" and piye/pie/ "two" suggest a connection with Kwʼadza, an extinct language of hunter-gatherers who may have had recently shifted to Cushitic. (Higher numerals were borrowed in both languages.)[ citation needed ]

Several parallels have been collected with many of the Afroasiatic languages. A lexicostatistical proposal for Hadza as a member of the family, perhaps particularly close to Chadic, [5] was criticized by specialists of Hadza and Cushitic as more likely consisting of several layers of loanwords and some chance resemblances, due to insufficient regularity in sound correspondences and a lack of grammatical evidence for a relationship. [6] George Starostin finds the hypothesis of a relationship of Hadza with Afroasiatic theoretically plausible, but that any demonstration of it by lexical comparison remains "almost by definition impossible", due to the reconstruction of Proto-Afroasiatic being still poorly developed. [7]

There are no dialects, though there is some regional vocabulary, especially Bantu loans, which are more numerous in the southern and western areas of high bilingualism.[ citation needed ]

The language is marked as "threatened" in Ethnologue. [8]

Phonology

Hadza syllable structure is limited to CV, or CVN if nasal vowels are analyzed as a coda nasal. Vowel-initial syllables do not occur initially, and medially they may be equivalent to /hV/ – at least, no minimal pairs of /h/ vs zero are known.[ citation needed ]

Hadza is noted for having medial clicks (clicks within morphemes). This distribution is also found in Sandawe and the Nguni Bantu languages, but not in the Khoisan languages of southern Africa. Some of these words are historically derivable from clicks in initial positions (many appear to reflect lexicalized reduplication, for example, and some are due to prefixes), but others are opaque. As in Sandawe, most medial clicks are glottalized, but not all: puche 'a spleen', tanche 'to aim', tacce 'a belt', minca 'to lick one's lips', laqo 'to trip someone', keqhe-na 'slow', penqhenqhe ~ peqeqhe 'to hurry', haqqa-ko 'a stone', shenqe 'to peer over', exekeke 'to listen', naxhi 'to be crowded', khaxxe 'to jump', binxo 'to carry kills under one's belt'.[ citation needed ]

Tone

Neither lexical tone nor pitch accent has been demonstrated for Hadza. There are no known lexical minimal pairs or grammatical use of stress/tone.[ citation needed ]

Vowels

Hadza has five vowels, [ieaou]. Long vowels may occur when intervocalic [ɦ] is elided. For example, [kʰaɦa] or [kʰaː] 'to climb', but some words are not attested with [ɦ], as [boːko] 'she' vs [boko] 'to be ill'. All vowels are nasalized before glottalized nasal and voiced nasal clicks, and speakers vary on whether they hear them as nasal vowels or as VN sequences. Invariable nasal vowels, although uncommon, do occur, though not before consonants that have a place of articulation to assimilate to. In such positions, [CṼCV] and [CVNCV] are allophones, but since VN cannot occur at the end of a word or before a glottal consonant, where only nasal vowels are found, it may be that nasal vowels are allophonic with VN in all positions.[ citation needed ]

Consonants

Consonants in shaded cells appear only in loanwords or are NC sequences, which do not appear to be single segments but are listed here to illustrate the orthography. (Not illustrated are nasal–click sequences in the middle of words: aspirated nch, nqh, nxh and tenuis ngc, ngq, ngx.)

Hadza consonants and orthography. [9]
Labial Dental~alveolar Postalveolar~palatal Velar Glottal
central lateral centrallateralplain labialized
Click Aspirated ᵏǀʰ ch ᵏǃʰ qh ᵏǁʰ xh
Tenuis ᵏǀ c ᵏǃ q ᵏǁ x
Nasal (ᵑʘʷ
~ᵑʘ͡ʔ

mcw)1
ᵑǀ nc ᵑǃ nq ᵑǁ nx
Glottalized nasal 1 ᵑǀ͡ʔ cc ᵑǃ͡ʔ qq ᵑǁ͡ʔ xx
Stop Aspirated ph th kh kʷʰ khw
Tenuis p p t t k k kw ʔ
voiced b b d d ɡ g ɡʷ gw
Ejective bb2
Aspirated prenasalized ᵐpʰ mp ⁿtʰ nt ᵑkʰ nk
Tenuis prenasalized ᵐp mb ⁿt nd ᵑk ng ᵑkʷ ngw
Nasal m m n n ɲ ny ŋ ngʼ ŋʷ ngʼw
Affricate Aspirated t͜sʰ tsh t͜ʃʰ tch c͜𝼆ʰ tlh3
Tenuis t͜s ts t͜ʃ tc c𝼆 tl3
Voiced d͜z z d͜ʒ j
Ejective t͜sʼ zz t͜ʃʼ jj c𝼆ʼ dl3 k͜xʼ gg4 k͜xʷʼ ggw
Aspirated prenasalized ⁿt͜sʰ nts/ns ⁿt͜ʃʰ ntc
Tenuis prenasalized ⁿt͜s nz ⁿt͜ʃ nj
Fricative f s s ɬ sl ʃ sh( x hh)6
Approximant ɾ ~ l l, r5( j y)7( w w)7 ɦ h7
  1. The nasalization of the glottalized nasal clicks is apparent on preceding vowels, but not during the hold of the click itself, which is silent due to simultaneous glottal closure. The labial [ᵑʘ͡ʔ] (or [ᵑʘʷ]) is found in a single mimetic word where it alternates with [ᵑǀ].
  2. The labial ejective /pʼ/ is only found in a few words.
  3. The palatal affricates may be pronounced with an alveolar onset (/t͜𝼆/etc.), but this is not required.
  4. The velar ejective /k͜xʼ/ varies between a plosive [kʼ], a central affricate [k͜xʼ], a lateral affricate [k͜𝼄ʼ], and a fricative [xʼ]. The other central ejective affricates can surface as ejective fricatives as well (i.e. [sʼ],[ʃʼ],[xʷʼ]).
  5. The lateral approximant /l/ is found as a flap [ɾ] between vowels and occasionally elsewhere, especially in rapid speech. [l] is most common post-pausa and in repeated syllables (e.g. in lola, sp. rabbit). A lateral flap realization [ɺ] can also occur.
  6. The voiceless velar fricative [x] is known from only a single word, where it alternates with /kʰ/.
  7. [ɦ] and zero onset appear to be allophones. [w,j] may be allophones of [u,i], and what are often transcribed in the literature as [w] next to a back vowel or [j] next to a front vowel (e.g. the msg copula transcribed -a, -ha, -wa, -ya) are nothing more than transitions between vowels.
  8. The NC sequences only occur in word-initial position in loanwords. The voiced obstruents and nasal consonants ŋŋʷdɡɡʷdʒ/ and perhaps /dz/ (on darker background) also seem to have been borrowed. [10]

Orthography

A practical orthography has been devised by Miller and Anyawire. [11] As of 2015, this orthography is not being used by any Hadza speakers and is therefore of limited value for communication in Hadza. It is broadly similar to the orthographies of neighboring languages such as Swahili, Isanzu, Iraqw, and Sandawe. The apostrophe, which is ubiquitous in transcription in the anthropological literature but causes problems with literacy, is not used: Glottal stop is indicated by vowel sequences (that is, /beʔe/ is written bee, as in Hazabee/ɦadzabeʔe/ 'the Hadza'), which true vowel sequences are separated by y or w (that is, /pie/ 'two' is written piye), though in some cases an h may be justified, and ejectives and glottalized clicks by gemination (apart from reduced dl instead of *ddl for /c𝼆ʼ/). The ejectives are based on the voiced consonants, bb zz jj dl gg ggw, because these are otherwise found mostly in borrowings and thus not common. Tc/tʃ/ and tch/tʃʰ/ are as in Sandawe, sl/ɬ/ as in Iraqw. (This is ultimately a French convention.) Nasalized vowels / VN rimes are an en in un. Long vowels are â, or aha where they are due to an elided /ɦ/. A tonic syllable may be written with an acute accent, á, but is generally not marked.[ citation needed ]

Grammar

For more information, see [12]

Hadza is a head-marking language in both clauses and noun phrases. Word order is flexible; the default constituent order is VSO, though VOS and fronting to SVO are both very common. The order of determiner, noun, and attributive also varies, though with morphological consequences. There is number and gender agreement on both attributives (for head nouns) and verbs (for subjects).

Reduplication of the initial syllable of a word, usually with tonic accent and a long vowel, is used to indicate 'just' (meaning either 'merely' or 'solely') and is quite common. It occurs on both nouns and verbs, and reduplication can be used to emphasize other things, such as the habitual suffix -he- or the pluractional infix kV.

Nouns and pronouns

Nouns have grammatical gender (masculine and feminine) and number (singular and plural). They are marked by suffixes as follows:

sg.pl
m-bii
f-ko-bee

The feminine plural is used for mixed natural gender, as in Hazabee 'the Hadza'. For many animals, the grammatical singular is transnumeric, as in English: dongoko 'zebra' (either one or a group). The masculine plural may trigger vowel harmony: dongobee 'zebras' (an individuated number), dungubii 'zebra bucks'. A couple of kin terms and the diminutive suffix -nakwe take -te in the m.sg., which is otherwise unmarked.

Gender is used metaphorically, with ordinarily feminine words made masculine if they are notably thin, and ordinarily masculine words made feminine if they are notably round. Gender also distinguishes such things as vines (m) and their tubers (f), or berry trees (f) and their berries (m). Mass nouns tend to be grammatically plural, such as atibii 'water' (cf. ati 'rain', atiko 'a spring').

The names reported for dead animals do not follow this pattern. Calling attention to a dead zebra, for example, uses the form hantayii (masculine hantayee, plural (rare) hantayetee and hantayitchii). This is because these forms are not nouns, but imperative verbs; the morphology is clearer in the imperative plural, when addressing more than one person: hantatate, hantâte, hantayetate, hantayitchate (substitute -si for final -te when addressing only men; see below for the verbal object suffixes -ta-, -a-, -eta-, -itcha-).

The copula

The -pe and -pi forms of nouns often seen in the anthropological literature (actually -phee and -phii) are copular: dongophee 'they are zebras'. The copular suffixes distinguish gender in all persons as well as clusivity in the 1st person. They are:

m.sg.f.sg.f.pl.m.pl
1.ex-nee-neko-'ophee-'uphii
1.in-bebee-bibii
2-tee-teko-tetee-titii
3-a-ako-phee-phii

Forms with high vowels (i, u) tend to raise preceding mid vowels to high, just as -bii does. The 3.sg copula tends to sound like a -ya(ko) or -wa(ko) after high and often mid vowels: /oa,ea/[owa,eja], and transcriptions with w and y are common in the literature.

Pronouns

Personal and demonstrative pronouns are:

Pronouns
singularplural
mascfemfemmasc
1st
person
exclusiveonoonokoôbeeûbii
inclusiveonebeeunibii
2nd personthethekoethebeeithibii
3rd
person
proximalhamahakohabeehabii
givenbamibôkobeebii
distalnahanâkonâbeenâbii
invisiblehimiggêhimiggîkohimiggêbeehimiggîbii

There are some additional 3rd-person pronouns, including some compound forms. Adverbs are formed from the 3rd-person forms by adding locative -na: hamana 'here', beena 'there', naná 'over there', himiggêna 'in/behind there'.

Verbs and adjectives

An infix kV, where V is an echo vowel, occurs after the first syllable of verbs to indicate pluractionality.

The copula was covered above. Hadza has several auxiliary verbs: sequential ka- and iya- ~ ya- 'and then', negative akhwa- 'not', and subjunctive i-. Their inflections may be irregular or have different inflectional endings from those of lexical verbs, [13] which are as follows:

Hadza tense–aspect–mood inflections
anterior/
non-past
posterior/
past
potential
conditional
veridical
conditional
imperative/
hortative
purposive
(subjunctive)
1sg-ˆta-naa-nee-nikwi-na
1.ex-'ota-'aa-'ee-'ukwi-ya
1.in-bita-baa-bee-bikwi(use 2pl)-ba
2sg-tita ~ -ita-taa-tee-tikwi-'V-ta
2f.pl-(e)têta-(e)tea-etee-ˆtîkwi-(ˆ)te
2m.pl-(i)tîta-(i)tia-itii-(ˆ)si
3m.sg-eya-amo-heso-kwiso-ka-so
3f.sg-ako-akwa-heko-kwiko-kota-ko
3f.pl-ephee-ame-hese-kwise-keta-se
3m.pl-iphii-ami-hisi-kwisi-kitcha-si

The functions of the anterior and posterior differ between auxiliaries; with lexical verbs, they are non-past and past. The potential and veridical conditionals reflect the degree of certainty that something would have occurred. 1sg.npst -ˆta and a couple other forms lengthen the preceding vowel. The 1.ex forms apart from -ya begin with a glottal stop. The imp.sg is a glottal stop followed by an echo vowel.

Habitual forms take -he, which tends to reduce to a long vowel, before these endings. In some verbs, the habitual has become lexicalized (marking the 3.POST forms with glottal stop), and so an actual habitual takes a second -he. Various compound tense-aspect-moods occur by doubling up the inflectional endings. There are several additional inflections which have not been worked out.

The inflectional endings are clitics and may occur on an adverb before the verb, leaving a bare verb stem (verb root plus object suffixes).

Attributives

As is common in the area, there are only a few bare-root adjectives in Hadza, such as pakapaa 'big'. Most attributive forms take a suffix with cross-gender number marking: -e (m.sg. and f.pl.) or -i (f.sg. and m.pl.). These agree with the noun they modify. The -i form tends to trigger vowel harmony, so that, for example, the adjective one- 'sweet' has the following forms:

one 'sweet'
singularplural
masconê (onehe)unîbii
femunîkoonêbee

The -ko/-bee/-bii ending may be replaced by the copula, but the e/i cross-number gender marking remains.

Demonstratives, adjectives, and other attributives may occur before or after a noun, but nouns only take their gender number endings when they occur first in the noun phrase: Ondoshibii unîbii 'sweet cordia berries', manako unîko 'tasty meat', but unîbii ondoshi and unîko mana. Similarly, dongoko bôko but bôko dongo 'those zebra'.

Verbs may also be made attributive: dluzîko akwiti 'the woman (akwitiko) who is speaking', from dlozo 'to say'. This attributive form is used with the copula to form the progressive aspect: dlozênee 'I am speaking' (male speaker), dluzîneko 'I am speaking' (female speaker).

Object marking

Verbs may take up to two object suffixes, for a direct object (DO) and indirect object (IO). These only differ in the 1EX and 3SG. The IO suffixes are also used on nouns to indicate possession (mako-kwa 'my pot', mako-a-kwa 'it is my pot').

Object/possessive suffixes
SGPL
DOIODOIO
1EX-kwa-oba-ya
1IN-ona ~ -yona
2F-ena-ina
2F-na
3M-a ~ -ya ~ -na-ma-itcha
3F-ta-sa-eta

Two object suffixes are only allowed if the first (the DO) is 3rd person. In such cases the DO reduces to the form of the attributive suffix: -e (M.SG / F.PL) or -i (F.PL / M.SG); only context tells which combination of number and gender is intended. 3rd-singular direct objects also reduce to this form in the imperative singular; 3rd-plural change their vowels but do not conflate with the singular: see 'dead zebra' under nouns above for an example of the forms.

Word order

The factors governing the word order within noun phrases are not known. Constituent order tends to be SXVO (where X is an auxiliary) for a new or emphasized subject, with the subject moving further back (XSVO, XVSO, and XVOS), or simply not mentioned (XVO) the better it is established. Where context, semantics, and the verbal suffixes fail to disambiguate, verb–noun–noun is understood to be VSO.

Lexicon

Numerals

The Hadza did not count before the introduction of the Swahili language. Native numerals are itchâme 'one' and piye 'two'. Sámaka 'three' is a Datooga loan, and bone 'four', bothano 'five', and ikhumi 'ten' are Sukuma. Aso 'many' is commonly used instead of bothano for 'five'. There is no systematic way to express other numbers without using Swahili.

Dorothea Bleek suggested piye 'two' might have a Bantu source; the closest locally in Nyaturu -βĩĩ. (Other local Bantu languages have an l/r between the vowels.) Sands first recognized the similarity of 'one' and 'two' to Kwʼadza noted above. Militarev notes similar forms to piye in Chadic languages, such as Hausa bíyúú 'two'. [14]

Dead animal names

Hadza has received some attention [15] for a dozen 'celebratory' [16] or 'triumphal' [17] names for dead animals. These are used to announce a kill or find. They are (in the imperative singular):

AnimalGeneric nameTriumphal name
zebradóngokohantáyii
giraffezzókwanakoháwayii
buffalonaggomakotíslii
leopardnqe, tcanjaihenqêe
lionsésemehubuwee
elandkhomatikohubuwii
impalap(h)óphokodlunkúwii
wildebeest
hartebeest
bisoko
qqeleko
zzonowii
other large antelopehephêe
small antelopehingcíyee
rhinocerostlhákatehukhúwee
elephant
hippopotamus
beggáwuko
wezzáyiko
kapuláyii
warthog
boar
dláha
kwa'i
hatcháyee
baboonneekonqokhówii
ostrichkhenanguhushúwee

The words are somewhat generic: henqêe may be used for any spotted cat, hushuwee for any running ground bird. 'Lion' and 'eland' use the same root. Blench thinks this may have something to do with the eland being considered magical in the region. [18]

An IO suffix may be used to reference the person who made the kill. Compare hanta- 'zebra' with the more mundane verbs, qhasha 'to carry' and kw- 'to give', in the imperative singular (when addressing one person) and the feminine imperative plural (when addressing the camp): [19]

hanta-i-i

hanta-ta-te

zebra-DO.3fs-IMP

"A zebra!"

hanta-i-ko-o

hanta-i-kwa-te

zebra-DO.3fs-IO.1sg-IMP

"I got a zebra!" [20]

(IMP.sg)

(IMP.pl)

 

 

hanta-i-i hanta-i-ko-o

hanta-ta-te hanta-i-kwa-te

zebra-DO.3fs-IMP zebra-DO.3fs-IO.1sg-IMP

{"A zebra!"} {"I got a zebra!"} [21]

qhasha-i-i

qhasha-ta-te

carry-DO.3fs-IMP

"Carry it!

kw-i-ko-o

kw-i-kwa-te

give-DO.3fs-IO.1sg-IMP

"Give it to me!"

(IMP.sg)

(IMP.pl)

 

 

qhasha-i-i kw-i-ko-o

qhasha-ta-te kw-i-kwa-te

carry-DO.3fs-IMP give-DO.3fs-IO.1sg-IMP

{"Carry it!} {"Give it to me!"}

Speculations about early human language

In 2003 the press widely reported suggestions by Alec Knight and Joanna Mountain of Stanford University that the original human language may have had clicks. The purported evidence for this is genetic: speakers of Juǀʼhoan and Hadza have the most divergent known mitochondrial DNA of any human populations, suggesting that they were the first, or at least among the first, surviving peoples to have split off the family tree. In other words, the three primary genetic divisions of humanity are the Hadza, the Juǀʼhoan and relatives, and everyone else. Because two of the three groups speak languages with clicks, perhaps their common ancestral language, which by implication is the ancestral language for all humankind, had clicks as well.

However, besides the genetic interpretation, this conclusion rests on several unsupported assumptions:

There is no evidence that any of these assumptions are correct, or even likely. Linguistic opinion is that click consonants may well be a relatively late development in human language, that they are no more resistant to change or any more likely to be linguistic relics than other speech sounds, and that they are easily borrowed: at least one Khoisan language, ǁXegwi, is believed to have reborrowed clicks from Bantu languages, which had earlier borrowed them from Khoisan languages, for example. The Knight and Mountain article is the latest in a long line of speculations about the primitive origin of click consonants, which have been largely motivated by the outdated idea that primitive people speak primitive languages, which has no empirical support. [22]

Related Research Articles

Click consonants, or clicks, are speech sounds that occur as consonants in many languages of Southern Africa and in three languages of East Africa. Examples familiar to English-speakers are the tut-tut or tsk! tsk! used to express disapproval or pity, the tchick! used to spur on a horse, and the clip-clop! sound children make with their tongue to imitate a horse trotting. However, these paralinguistic sounds in English are not full click consonants, as they only involve the front of the tongue, without the release of the back of the tongue that is required for clicks to combine with vowels and form syllables.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Khoisan languages</span> Group of African language families with click consonants

The Khoisan languages are a number of African languages once classified together, originally by Joseph Greenberg. Khoisan is defined as those languages that have 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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Xhosa language</span> Nguni language of southern South Africa

Xhosa, formerly spelled Xosa and also known by its local name isiXhosa, is a Nguni language, indigenous to Southern Africa and one of the official languages of South Africa and Zimbabwe. Xhosa is spoken as a first language by approximately 10 million people and as a second language by another 10 million, mostly in South Africa, particularly in Eastern Cape, Western Cape, Northern Cape and Gauteng, and also in parts of Zimbabwe and Lesotho. It has perhaps the heaviest functional load of click consonants in a Bantu language, with one count finding that 10% of basic vocabulary items contained a click.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Taa language</span> Tuu language of southwestern Botswana and eastern Namibia

TaaTAH, also known as ǃXóõKOH, is a Tuu language notable for its large number of phonemes, perhaps the largest in the world. It is also notable for having perhaps the heaviest functional load of click consonants, with one count finding that 82% of basic vocabulary items started with a click. 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. In 2011, there were around 2,500 speakers of Taa.

Nǁng or Nǁŋǃke, commonly known by the name of its only spoken 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 ǀʼAuni name for the Nǀuu, ǂKhomani, is used by the South African government. As of June 2021, only one speaker of the Nǀuu dialect remains, the rest of the population having shifted to Khoekhoe and Afrikaans.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Khoekhoe language</span> Khoe language spoken in southern Africa

Khoekhoe, also known by the ethnic terms Nama, Damara (ǂNūkhoegowab), or Nama/Damara and formerly as Hottentot, is the most widespread of the non-Bantu languages of Southern Africa that make heavy use of click consonants and therefore were formerly classified as Khoisan, a grouping now recognized as obsolete. It belongs to the Khoe language family, and is spoken in Namibia, Botswana, and South Africa primarily by three ethnic groups: Namakhoen, ǂNūkhoen, and Haiǁomkhoen.

In phonetics, the airstream mechanism is the method by which airflow is created in the vocal tract. Along with phonation and articulation, it is one of three main components of speech production. The airstream mechanism is mandatory for most sound production and constitutes the first part of this process, which is called initiation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Juǀʼhoan language</span> Kxa language spoken in Southern Africa

Juǀʼhoan, also known as Southern or Southeastern ǃKung or ǃXun, is the southern variety of the ǃKung dialect continuum, spoken in northeastern Namibia and the Northwest District of Botswana by San Bushmen who largely identify themselves as Juǀʼhoansi. Several regional dialects are distinguished: Epukiro, Tsumǃkwe, Rundu, Omatako and ǂKxʼauǁʼein, with Tsumǃkwe being the best described and often taken as representative.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sandawe language</span> Language isolate of central Tanzania

Sandawe is a language spoken by about 60,000 Sandawe people in the Dodoma Region of Tanzania. Sandawe's use of click consonants, a rare feature shared with only two other languages of East Africa – Hadza and Dahalo, had been the basis of its classification as a member of the defunct Khoisan family of Southern Africa since Albert Drexel in the 1920s. Recent investigations however suggest that Sandawe may be related to the Khoe family regardless of the validity of Khoisan as a whole. A discussion of Sandawe's linguistic classification can be found in Sands (1998).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tzotzil language</span> Mayan language spoken in Mexico

Tzotzil is a Maya language spoken by the Indigenous Tzotzil Maya people in the Mexican state of Chiapas. Most speakers are bilingual in Spanish as a second language. In Central Chiapas, some primary schools and a secondary school are taught in Tzotzil. Tzeltal is the most closely related language to Tzotzil and together they form a Tzeltalan sub-branch of the Mayan language family. Tzeltal, Tzotzil and Chʼol are the most widely spoken languages in Chiapas besides Spanish.

Dahalo is an endangered Cushitic language spoken by around 500–600 Dahalo people on the coast of Kenya, near the mouth of the Tana River. Dahalo is unusual among the world's languages in using all four airstream mechanisms found in human language: clicks, implosives, ejectives, and pulmonic consonants.

Kusaal is a Gur language spoken primarily in northern eastern Ghana, and Burkina Faso. It is spoken by about 121,000 people and takes its name from the Kusaal people, or Kusasi. There is a distinctive dialect division between Agole, to the East of the Volta River, and Toende, to the West. Agole has more speakers. The 6-district capital; Bawku West with Zebilla as capital and the rest; Binduri, Bawku, Tempane, Garu and Pusiga districts mostly Agole dialect speakers. The complete Bible translation is in the Agole dialect.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tiipai language</span> Yuman language spoken in Mexico and US

Tiipai (Tipay) is a Native American language belonging to the Delta–California branch of the Yuman language family, which spans Arizona, California, and Baja California. As part of the Yuman family, Tiipai has also been consistently included in the controversial quasi-stock Hokan. Tiipai is spoken by a number of Kumeyaay tribes in northern Baja California and southern San Diego County, California. There were, conservatively, 200 Tiipai speakers in the early 1990s; the number of speakers has since declined steadily, numbering roughly 100 speakers in Baja California in a 2007 survey.

The phonology of Sesotho and those of the other Sotho–Tswana languages are radically different from those of "older" or more "stereotypical" Bantu languages. Modern Sesotho in particular has very mixed origins inheriting many words and idioms from non-Sotho–Tswana languages.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nukak language</span> Endangered indigenous language of Colombia

The Nukak language is a language of uncertain classification, perhaps part of the macrofamily Puinave-Maku. It is very closely related to Kakwa.

Arbore is an Afro-Asiatic language spoken by the Arbore people in southern Ethiopia in a few settlements of Hamer woreda near Lake Chew Bahir.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Enggano language</span> Austronesian language spoken in Indonesia

The Enggano language, or Engganese, is an Austronesian language spoken on Enggano Island off the southwestern coast of Sumatra, Indonesia.

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. They are produced by making a glottal stop, which stops the flow of air, and then using the front of the tongue to make the click sound in the middle of the glottal stop.

Nuaulu is a language indigenous to the island of Seram Island in Indonesia, and it is spoken by the Nuaulu people. The language is split into two dialects, a northern and a southern dialect, between which there a communication barrier. The dialect of Nuaulu referred to on this page is the southern dialect, as described in Bolton 1991.

References

  1. 1 2 Skaanes (2015)
  2. Glottopedia article on Hadza language.
  3. "UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in danger".
  4. Sands 1998.
  5. Militarev 2023.
  6. Sands et al. 2023.
  7. Starostin 2023.
  8. "Hadza". Ethnologue.com. Retrieved 2017-01-17.
  9. Consonants in shaded cells appear only in loanwords or are NC sequences, which do not appear to be single segments but are listed here to illustrate the orthography. (Not illustrated are nasal–click sequences in the middle of words: aspirated nch, nqh, nxh and tenuis ngc, ngq, ngx.)
  10. Elderkin 1978.
  11. Miller et al. (2013)
  12. Miller (2008)
  13. Ya and ka take -ˆto, -tikwa, -ˆte, -ˆti in the 3rd-person posterior rather than -amo, -akwa, -ame, -ami, for example. In lexical verbs, those endings are used with habitual -he- to emphasize it.
  14. Militarev 2023, p. 78.
  15. Parkvall, Mikael (2006). Limits of Language: Almost Everything You Didn't Know You Didn't Know about Language and Languages. Battlebridge Publications. ISBN   9781903292044.
  16. Tucker, Bryan & Woodburn (1977)
  17. Blench (2008)
  18. Blench (2008)
  19. Miller (2009)
  20. These glosses are crude; these words do not translate into Swahili or English
  21. These glosses are crude; these words do not translate into Swahili or English
  22. Sands & Güldemann (2009)
  23. Blindsight, with notes at Watts' website
  24. Pennisi (2004)

Bibliography