Khoisan languages
|
Map showing the distribution of the Khoi-San languages (yellow) |
The
Khoisan or
Khoesaan languages compose the smallest and least well supported
phylum of
African languages. Historically, they were mainly spoken by the
Khoisan (
Khoi and
Bushmen or San) people. Today they are only spoken in the
Kalahari Desert in southwestern
Africa, and in a small area in
Tanzania. The only widespread Khoisan language is
Nama, with a quarter of a million speakers;
Sandawe is second in number with about 40,000, some monolingual; and the
Ju language cluster has some 30,000 speakers total. Many of the other languages are becoming increasingly rare or
moribund, and several are known to have become extinct. Most have no written record. The
Hadza and Sandawe languages of Tanzania are generally classified as Khoisan, but all of the branches are at best extremely distant linguistically. Khoisanists (linguists who study Khoisan languages) regard the Khoisan hypothesis as undemonstrated, and classify these languages into anywhere from four to seven independent language families.
Khoisan languages are most famous for the use of
click consonants (represented in writing as an exclamation mark) as
phonemes. The
Ju/'hoan language has some 30 click consonants (not counting clusters) and perhaps 90 separate phonemes, including
strident and
pharyngealized vowels and 4 tones. The
!Xóõ and
‡Hõã languages are similarly complex. Many people were exposed to this group of languages through
Nǃxau's language in the
1980 film
The Gods Must Be Crazy.
The only other languages using clicks as phonemes are neighboring
Bantu languages in southern Africa, such as
Xhosa,
Zulu, and
Sesotho; the
South Cushitic language
Dahalo in
Kenya, and an extinct
Australian Aborigine ceremonial language called
Damin. The Bantu languages adopted the use of clicks from neighboring Khoisan populations, often through intermarriage, while the Dahalo are thought to have retained clicks from an earlier Khoisan-like language when they
shifted to speaking a Cushitic language.
Grammatically, the Khoisan languages are generally fairly isolating. Suffixes are often used, but word order is overall more widely used than inflection.
*
List of Khoisan languages*
Khoe languages*
Tuu languages*
Ju languages*
‡Hõã language*
Sandawe language*
Hadza language*
!Xóõ language*Köhler, O. (1971) 'Die Khoe-sprachigen Buschmänner der Kalahari',
Forschungen zur allgemeinen und regionalen Geschichte. (Festschrift Kurt Kayser). Wiesbaden: F. Steiner, 373–411.
*Treis, Yvonne (1998) 'Names of Khoisan languages and their variants', in Schladt, Matthias (ed.)
Language, Identity, and Conceptualization among the Khoisan. Köln: Rüdiger Köppe, 463–503.
*Vossen, Rainer (1997)
Die Khoe-Sprachen. Ein Beitrag zur Erforschung der Sprachgeschichte Afrikas. Köln: Rüdiger Köppe.
*Westphal, E.O.J. (1971) 'The click languages of Southern and Eastern Africa', in Sebeok, T.A. (ed.)
Current trends in Linguistics Vol. 7: Linguistics in Sub-Saharan Africa. Berlin: Mouton, 367–420.
*Winter, J.C. (1981) 'Die Khoisan-Familie'. In Heine, Bernd, Schadeberg Thilo C. & Wolff, Ekkehard (eds.)
Die Sprachen Afrikas. Hamburg: Helmut Buske, 329–374.
*
Khoisan language family tree (considered unreliable by Khoisanists; see
List of Khoisan languages)
*
Khoisan linguistics at Cornell University
