ǂKxʼaoǁʼae (English pronunciation: , native pronunciation: ), also rendered ǂKxʼauǁʼein ( ), or Gobabi ǃKung (''Gobabis-ǃXû''), is an eastern dialect of the Southern ǃKung language, spoken in

Botswana Botswana, officially the Republic of Botswana, is a landlocked country in Southern Africa. Botswana is topographically flat, with approximately 70 percent of its territory part of the Kalahari Desert. It is bordered by South Africa to the sou ...

(the settlements of Groote Laagte, East Hanahai, Kanagas and Ghanzi in

Ghanzi District Ghanzi (sometimes Gantsi) is a Districts of Botswana, district in western Botswana, bordering Namibia in the west and extending east into much of the interior of the country. The district's administrative centre is the town of Ghanzi. Most of the e ...

and on the commercial farms) and in

Namibia Namibia, officially the Republic of Namibia, is a country on the west coast of Southern Africa. Its borders include the Atlantic Ocean to the west, Angola and Zambia to the north, Botswana to the east and South Africa to the south; in the no ...

(the city of Gobabis and settlements along the C22 road to

Otjinene Otjinene is a village in the Omaheke Region of Namibia. It is the district capital of the Otjinene Constituency and had a population of 6,876 people in 2023. Geography Otjinene is connected via a tarred road to the regional capital Gobabis, ...

as far as Eiseb,

Omaheke Region Omaheke (the Otjiherero word for sandveld) is one of the fourteen regions of Namibia, the least populous region. Its capital is Gobabis. It lies in eastern Namibia on the border with Botswana and is the western extension of the Kalahari Desert ...

) by about 7,000 people. In Botswana, most speakers are bilingual in

Naro Naro ( ) is a ''comune'' in the province of Agrigento, on the island of Sicily, Italy. It is bounded by the comuni of Agrigento, Caltanissetta, Camastra, Campobello di Licata, Canicattì, Castrofilippo, Delia, Favara, Licata, Palma di ...

Tswana Tswana may refer to: * Tswana people, the Bantu languages, Bantu speaking people in Botswana, South Africa, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Zambia, and other Southern Africa regions * Tswana language, the language spoken by the (Ba)Tswana people * Tswanaland, ...

. There are numerous spellings of the name, including ''ǁAuǁei, ǁXʼauǁʼe,'' and ''Auen''. Endonyms are ''Juǀʼhoan(si), ǃXun'' in Namibia and ''ǂXʼaoǁʼaen'' (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

to give ''Mokaukau ''for one person, ''Bakaukau'' for the group and ''Sekaukau'' for the language). In Namibia, ǂKxʼaoǁʼae'' ''tends to refer literally to the ǃXuun speakers to the north in the Caprivi area. With the exception of a few cultural traits, speakers of ǂKxʼaoǁʼae'' '' and those of Juǀʼhoan both in Botswana and Namibia argue that they are one and the same people, speaking one language, with some dialectal attributes. The non-Latin characters used by the language predominantly refer to

click consonants 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'' (British spelling) or '' tsk! tsk!' ...

and follow the orthography by Patrick Dickens for Juǀʼhoan. The limited data on these dialects is poorly transcribed, but as of 2015 fieldwork is in progress.

Notes

External links

ǂKxʼao-ǁʼae basic lexicon at the Global Lexicostatistical Database
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kxʼao-lʼae language Languages of Botswana Kx'a languages stub

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