Khoisan Languages
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The Khoisan languages ( ; also Khoesan or Khoesaan) are a number of
African languages The number of languages natively spoken in Africa is variously estimated (depending on the delineation of language vs. dialect) at between 1,250 and 2,100, and by some counts at over 3,000. Nigeria alone has over 500 languages (according to SI ...
once classified together, originally by
Joseph Greenberg Joseph Harold Greenberg (May 28, 1915 – May 7, 2001) was an American linguist, known mainly for his work concerning linguistic typology and the genetic classification of languages. Life Early life and education Joseph Greenberg was born on M ...
. Khoisan is defined as those languages that have click consonants and do not belong to other African
language families A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ancestor, called the proto-language of that family. The term ''family'' is a metaphor borrowed from biology, with the tree model used in historical linguistics ana ...
. 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 A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ancestor, called the proto-language of that family. The term ''family'' is a metaphor borrowed from biology, with the tree model used in historical linguistics ana ...
and two
language isolate A language isolate is a language that has no demonstrable genetic relationship with any other languages. Basque in Europe, Ainu and Burushaski in Asia, Sandawe in Africa, Haida and Zuni in North America, Kanoê in South America, and Tiwi ...
s. All but two Khoisan languages are indigenous to southern Africa; these are classified into three language families. The Khoe family appears to have migrated to southern Africa not long before the Bantu expansion. Ethnically, their speakers are the Khoekhoe and the San (Bushmen). Two languages of eastern Africa, those of the Sandawe and Hadza, were originally also classified as Khoisan, although their speakers are ethnically neither Khoekhoe nor San. Before the Bantu expansion, Khoisan languages, or languages like them, were likely spread throughout southern and eastern Africa. They are currently restricted to the
Kalahari Desert The Kalahari Desert is a large semiarid climate, semiarid sandy savanna in Southern Africa covering including much of Botswana as well as parts of Namibia and South Africa. It is not to be confused with the Angolan, Namibian, and South African ...
, primarily 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 ...
and
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 ...
, and to the Rift Valley in central
Tanzania Tanzania, officially the United Republic of Tanzania, is a country in East Africa within the African Great Lakes region. It is bordered by Uganda to the northwest; Kenya to the northeast; the Indian Ocean to the east; Mozambique and Malawi to t ...
. Most of the languages are
endangered An endangered species is a species that is very likely to become extinct in the near future, either worldwide or in a particular political jurisdiction. Endangered species may be at risk due to factors such as habitat loss, poaching, inv ...
, and several are moribund or
extinct Extinction is the termination of an organism by the death of its Endling, last member. A taxon may become Functional extinction, functionally extinct before the death of its last member if it loses the capacity to Reproduction, reproduce and ...
. Most have no written record. The only widespread Khoisan language is Khoekhoe (also known as Khoekhoegowab, Nàmá or Damara) of Namibia, Botswana and South Africa, with a quarter of a million speakers; Sandawe in Tanzania is second in number with some 40–80,000, some monolingual; and the ǃKung language of the northern Kalahari spoken by some 16,000 or so people. Language use is quite strong among the 20,000 speakers of
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, half of whom speak it as a second language. Khoisan languages are best known for their use of
click consonant 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!' ...
s as
phoneme A phoneme () is any set of similar Phone (phonetics), speech sounds that are perceptually regarded by the speakers of a language as a single basic sound—a smallest possible Phonetics, phonetic unit—that helps distinguish one word fr ...
s. These are typically written with characters such as ǃ and ǂ. Clicks are quite versatile as consonants, as they involve two articulations of the tongue which can operate partially independently. Consequently, the languages with the greatest numbers of consonants in the world are Khoisan. The Juǀʼhoan language has 48 click consonants among nearly as many non-click consonants, strident and pharyngealized vowels, and four tones. The ǃXóõ and ǂHõã languages are even more complex.


Validity

Khoisan was proposed as one of the four families of
African languages The number of languages natively spoken in Africa is variously estimated (depending on the delineation of language vs. dialect) at between 1,250 and 2,100, and by some counts at over 3,000. Nigeria alone has over 500 languages (according to SI ...
in
Joseph Greenberg Joseph Harold Greenberg (May 28, 1915 – May 7, 2001) was an American linguist, known mainly for his work concerning linguistic typology and the genetic classification of languages. Life Early life and education Joseph Greenberg was born on M ...
's classification (1949–1954, revised in 1963). However, linguists who study Khoisan languages reject their unity, and the name "Khoisan" is used by them as a term of convenience without any implication of linguistic validity, much as " Papuan" and " Australian" are. It has been suggested that the similarities of the Tuu and Kxʼa families are due to a southern African
Sprachbund A sprachbund (, from , 'language federation'), also known as a linguistic area, area of linguistic convergence, or diffusion area, is a group of languages that share areal features resulting from geographical proximity and language contact. Th ...
rather than a genealogical relationship, whereas the Khoe (or perhaps Kwadi–Khoe) family is a more recent migrant to the area, and may be related to Sandawe in East Africa.Güldemann, Tom and Edward D. Elderkin (forthcoming)
On external genealogical relationships of the Khoe family.
' In Brenzinger, Matthias and Christa König (eds.), ''Khoisan Languages and Linguistics: the Riezlern Symposium 2003.'' Quellen zur Khoisan-Forschung 17. Köln: Rüdiger Köppe.
Ernst Oswald Johannes Westphal is known for his early rejection of the Khoisan language family ( Starostin 2003). Bonny Sands (1998) concluded that the family is not demonstrable with current evidence. Anthony Traill at first accepted Khoisan (Traill 1986), but by 1998 concluded that it could not be demonstrated with current data and methods, rejecting it as based on a single typological criterion: the presence of clicks. Dimmendaal (2008) summarized the general view thus: " has to be concluded that Greenberg's intuitions on the genetic unity of Khoisan could not be confirmed by subsequent research. Today, the few scholars working on these languages treat the three outhern groupsas independent language families that cannot or can no longer be shown to be genetically related" (p. 841). Starostin (2013) accepts a relationship between Sandawe and Khoi is plausible, as is one between Tuu and Kxʼa, but sees no indication of a relationship between Sandawe and Khoi on the one hand and Tuu and Kxʼa on the other, or between any of them and Hadza. Janina Brutt-Griffler writes: "Given that such colonial borders were generally arbitrarily drawn, they grouped large numbers of ethnic groups that spoke many languages." She hypothesizes that this took place within efforts to prevent the spread of English during European colonization and prevent the entrance of the majority into the middle class.


Khoisan language variation

Anthony Traill noted the Khoisan languages' extreme variation. Despite their shared clicks, the Khoisan languages diverge significantly from each other. Traill demonstrated this linguistic diversity in the data presented in the below table. The first two columns include words from the two Khoisan
language isolate A language isolate is a language that has no demonstrable genetic relationship with any other languages. Basque in Europe, Ainu and Burushaski in Asia, Sandawe in Africa, Haida and Zuni in North America, Kanoê in South America, and Tiwi ...
s, Sandawe and Hadza. The following three are languages from the Khoe family, the Kxʼa family, and the Tuu family, respectively.


Families

The branches that were once considered part of so-called Khoisan are now considered independent families, since it has not been demonstrated that they are related according to the standard comparative method. See Khoe languages for speculations on the linguistic history of the region.


Hadza

With about 800 speakers in Tanzania, Hadza is no longer seen as a Khoisan language and appears to be unrelated to any other language. Genetically, the Hadza people are unrelated to the Khoisan peoples of Southern Africa, and their closest relatives may be among the
Pygmies In anthropology, pygmy peoples are ethnic groups whose average height is unusually short. The term pygmyism is used to describe the phenotype of endemic short stature (as opposed to disproportionate dwarfism occurring in isolated cases in a po ...
of Central Africa.


Sandawe

There is some indication that Sandawe (about 40,000 speakers in Tanzania) may be related to the Khoe family, such as a congruent pronominal system and some good Swadesh-list matches, but not enough to establish regular sound correspondences. Sandawe is not related to Hadza, despite their proximity.


Khoe

The Khoe family is both the most numerous and diverse family of Khoisan languages, with seven living languages and over a quarter million speakers. Although little Kwadi data is available, proto-Khoe–Kwadi reconstructions have been made for pronouns and some basic vocabulary. *? Khoe–Kwadi ** Kwadi (extinct) ** Khoe *** Khoekhoe This branch appears to have been affected by the Kxʼa–Tuu ''
sprachbund A sprachbund (, from , 'language federation'), also known as a linguistic area, area of linguistic convergence, or diffusion area, is a group of languages that share areal features resulting from geographical proximity and language contact. Th ...
''. **** Nama (ethnonyms Khoekhoen, Nama, Damara) (a dialect cluster including ǂAakhoe and Haiǁom) **** Eini (extinct) ****South Khoekhoe ***** Korana (moribund) ***** Xiri (moribund; a dialect cluster) *** Tshu–Khwe (or ''Kalahari)'' Many of these languages have undergone partial click loss. ****East Tshu–Khwe (East Kalahari) ***** Shua (a dialect cluster including Deti, Tsʼixa, ǀXaise, and Ganádi) ***** Tsoa (a dialect cluster including Cire Cire and Kua) ****West Tshu–Khwe (West Kalahari) ***** Kxoe (a dialect cluster including ǁAni and Buga) *****
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(a dialect cluster, including ǂHaba) *****Gǁana–Gǀwi (a dialect cluster including Gǁana and Gǀwi) A Haiǁom language is listed in most Khoisan references. A century ago the Haiǁom people spoke a Ju dialect, probably close to ǃKung, but they now speak a divergent dialect of Nama. Thus their language is variously said to be extinct or to have 18,000 speakers, to be Ju or to be Khoe. (Their numbers have been included under Nama above.) They are known as the ''Saa'' by the Nama, and this is the source of the word '' San''.


Tuu

The Tuu family consists of two language clusters, which are related to each other at about the distance of Khoekhoe and Tshukhwe within Khoe. They are typologically very similar to the Kxʼa languages (below), but have not been demonstrated to be related to them genealogically (the similarities may be an areal feature). *Tuu **Taa *** ǃXoon (4200 speakers. A dialect cluster.) *** Lower Nossob (Two dialects, ǀʼAuni and ǀHaasi. Extinct.) **ǃKwi *** Nǁng (1 speaker. A dialect cluster.) *** ǀXam (A dialect cluster. Extinct.) *** ǂUngkue (A dialect cluster. Extinct.) *** ǁXegwi (Extinct.)


Kxʼa

The Kxʼa family is a relatively distant relationship formally demonstrated in 2010. *Kxʼa ** ǂʼAmkoe (200 speakers, Botswana. Moribund. A dialect cluster of Nǃaqriaxe, (Eastern) ǂHoan, and Sasi). ** ǃKung (also ''ǃXun'' or ''Ju,'' formerly ''Northern Khoisan)'' is a dialect cluster. (~45,000 speakers.) Juǀʼhoan is the best-known dialect.


Classification by Starostin (2013)

Starostin (2013) gives the following classification of the Khoisan " macrofamily", which he considers to be a single coherent
language family A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ancestor, called the proto-language of that family. The term ''family'' is a metaphor borrowed from biology, with the tree model used in historical linguistics ...
.Starostin, Georgiy C. 2013
Языки Африки. Опыт построения лексикостатистической классификации. Т. 1: Методология. Койсанские языки
/ Languages of Africa: an attempt at a lexicostatistical classification. Volume 1: Methodology; Khoisan languages. Moscow: Языки славянской культуры / LRC Press. 510 p.
However, this classification is not widely accepted. * Khoisan ** Hadza ** Macro-Khoisan (excl. Hadza) *** Sandawe–Khoe–Kwadi **** Sandawe **** Khoe–Kwadi ***** Kwadi ***** Central Khoisan (= Khoe) ****** Khoekhoe ****** Kalahari Khoe *** Peripheral Khoisan **** Southern Khoisan (= !Kwi–Taa ~ Tuu) ***** !Kwi ***** Taa **** Ju–ǂHoan ***** Western ǂHoan ***** Northern Khoisan (= Ju) In the tree on page 472, Starostin really writes "Western ǂHoan", which is a synonym for Taa, but evidently means Eastern ǂHoan, that is, ǂʼAmkoe.


Other "click languages"

Not all languages using clicks as phonemes are considered Khoisan. Most others are neighboring
Bantu languages The Bantu languages (English: , Proto-Bantu language, Proto-Bantu: *bantʊ̀), or Ntu languages are a language family of about 600 languages of Central Africa, Central, Southern Africa, Southern, East Africa, Eastern and Southeast Africa, South ...
in southern Africa: the
Nguni languages The Nguni languages are a group of Bantu languages spoken in southern Africa (mainly South Africa, Zimbabwe and Eswatini) by the Nguni people. Nguni languages include Xhosa, Tsonga, Ndebele, and Swati. The appellation "Nguni" derives from t ...
( Xhosa, Zulu, Swazi, Phuthi, and Northern Ndebele); Sotho; Yeyi 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 ...
; and Mbukushu, Kwangali, and Gciriku in the Caprivi Strip. Clicks are spreading to a few additional neighboring languages. Of these languages, Xhosa, Zulu, Ndebele and Yeyi have intricate systems of click consonants; the others, despite the click in the name ''Gciriku,'' more rudimentary ones. There is also the South Cushitic language Dahalo in
Kenya Kenya, officially the Republic of Kenya, is a country located in East Africa. With an estimated population of more than 52.4 million as of mid-2024, Kenya is the 27th-most-populous country in the world and the 7th most populous in Africa. ...
, which has dental clicks in a few score words, and an extinct and presumably artificial Australian ritual language called Damin, which had only nasal clicks. The Bantu languages adopted the use of clicks from neighboring, displaced, or absorbed Khoisan populations (or from other Bantu languages), often through intermarriage, while the Dahalo are thought to have retained clicks from an earlier language when they shifted to speaking a Cushitic language; if so, the pre-Dahalo language may have been something like Hadza or Sandawe. Damin is an invented ritual language, and has nothing to do with Khoisan. These are the only languages known to have clicks in normal vocabulary. Occasionally other languages are said by laypeople to have "click" sounds. This is usually a misnomer for
ejective consonant In phonetics, ejective consonants are usually voiceless consonants that are pronounced with a Airstream mechanism#Glottalic initiation, glottalic egressive airstream. In the phonology of a particular language, ejectives may contrast with Aspirat ...
s, which are found across much of the world, or is a reference to paralinguistic use of clicks such as English ''tsk! tsk!''


Comparative vocabulary

Sample basic vocabulary for Khoisan language families:


See also

* Khoisan word lists (Wiktionary) * Languages of Botswana * Languages of Namibia


References


Bibliography

* * * * (Reprints, with minor corrections, a series of eight articles published in the ''Southwestern Journal of Anthropology'' from 1949 to 1954.) * (Heavily revised version of Greenberg 1955.) (All three editions simultaneously published at The Hague by Mouton Publishers) * * * * * * * * * * * * Traill, Anthony. 1986. "Do the Khoi have a place in the San? New data on Khoisan linguistic relationships." In ''African Hunter-gatherers'' (International Symposium), Franz Rottland and Rainer Vossen, 407–430. ''Sprache und Geschichte in Afrika'', special issue 7.1. Hamburg: Helmut Buske Verlag. *Treis, Yvonne. 1998. "Names of Khoisan languages and Their Variants." In ''Language, Identity, and Conceptualization Among the Khoisan'', edited by Matthias Schladt. Köln: Rüdiger Köppe, 463–503. *Vossen, Rainer. 1997. ''Die Khoe-Sprachen. Ein Beitrag zur Erforschung der Sprachgeschichte Afrikas''. Köln: Rüdiger Köppe. *Vossen, Rainer. 2013. ''The Khoesan Languages''. Oxon: Routledge. * Westphal, E.O.J. 1971. "The Click Languages of Southern and Eastern Africa." In ''Current Trends in Linguistics'', Volume 7: ''Linguistics in Sub-Saharan Africa'', edited by T.A. Sebeok. Berlin: Mouton, 367–420. *Winter, J.C. 1981. "Die Khoisan-Familie." In ''Die Sprachen Afrikas'', edited by Bernd Heine, Thilo C. Schadeberg, and Ekkehard Wolff. Hamburg: Helmut Buske, 329–374. {{Authority control Proposed language families