Tsoa or Tshwa, also known as Kua and Hiechware, is an
East Kalahari Khoe
The Khoi 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 ...
dialect cluster spoken by several thousand people in
Botswana
Botswana (, ), officially the Republic of Botswana ( tn, Lefatshe la Botswana, label= Setswana, ), is a landlocked country in Southern Africa. Botswana is topographically flat, with approximately 70 percent of its territory being the Kal ...
and
Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe (), officially the Republic of Zimbabwe, is a landlocked country located in Southeast Africa, between the Zambezi and Limpopo Rivers, bordered by South Africa to the south, Botswana to the south-west, Zambia to the north, and ...
.
One of the dialects is
Tjwao (formerly Tshwao), the only Khoisan language in Zimbabwe, where "Koisan" is a language officially recognised in the constitution.
Dialects
Tsoa–Kua is a
dialect cluster
A dialect continuum or dialect chain is a series of language varieties spoken across some geographical area such that neighboring varieties are mutually intelligible, but the differences accumulate over distance so that widely separated vari ...
, which is still poorly studied but seems to include:
*Tsoa, also known as Hiechware and as various other combinations of Hio-, Hie-, Hai- + Chwa, Tshwa, Chuwau, Tshuwau + -re, -ri; also as Sarwa, Sesarwa (the Tswana name), Gǁabake-Ntshori, Tati, and Kwe-Etshori Kwee. Zimbabwean Tshwao apparently belongs here.
*Kua, also spelled Cua and Tyhua. That is, both Tsoa and Kua may be pronounced something like , and it's not clear that they are distinct dialects.
*Cire Cire , spoken in the area around
Nata
Nata could refer to:
__NOTOC__ Places
* Nata, Botswana, a village in Central District of Botswana
* Nata, Cyprus, a small village near Paphos, Cyprus
* Natá, Coclé, a town and corregimiento in Natá District, Coclé Province, Panama
* Natá Di ...
in Botswana.
Phonology
The following inventory is of the Kua dialect:
The Cire-cire (not cited) dialect has the following
consonant
In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are and pronounced with the lips; and pronounced with the front of the tongue; and pronounced w ...
inventory:
The clicks have a very uneven distribution: Only a dozen words begin with one of the palatal clicks (), and these are replaced by dental clicks () among younger speakers. Only half a dozen words start with one of the alveolar clicks (), and half a dozen more with one of the affricated clicks. These rather marginal sounds are placed in parentheses in the chart.
Tsoa has the five vowels , and three nasal vowels . It is not clear if Tsoa has long vowels, or simply sequences of identical vowels .
There are two tones, high and low, plus a few cases of mid tone.
In the northern dialect of Kua, like all other East Kalahari Khoe languages, the palatal click series has become palatal stops. Southern Kua has retained the palatal clicks, but the dental stops have palatalized, as they have in
Gǀui and
ǂʼAmkoe. Thus northern Kua has 'ash' and 'eland', whereas southern Kua has 'ash' and (or perhaps ) 'eland'.
[Gerlach, Linda (2015) "Phonetic and phonological description of the Nǃaqriaxe variety of ǂʼAmkoe and the impact of language contact". PhD dissertation, Humboldt University, Berlin]
References
Bibliography
Vossen, Rainer (ed.). 2013a
The Khoesan Languages London & New York: Routledge.
External links
Kua/Tsua basic lexicon at the Global Lexicostatistical Database
{{DEFAULTSORT:Tsoa Language
Khoe languages
Languages of Botswana
Languages of Zimbabwe
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