Tsoa, Tshwa or Tshuwau, also known as Kua and Hiechware, is an East Kalahari Khoe dialect cluster spoken by several thousand people 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

Zimbabwe file:Zimbabwe, relief map.jpg, upright=1.22, Zimbabwe, relief map Zimbabwe, officially the Republic of Zimbabwe, is a landlocked country in Southeast Africa, between the Zambezi and Limpopo Rivers, bordered by South Africa to the south, Bots ...

. One of the dialects is Tjwao (formerly spelled '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 is a variety of language spoken by a particular group of people. This may include dominant and standardized varieties as well as vernacular, unwritten, or non-standardized varieties, such as those used in developing countries or iso ...

, 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), Gǁabakʼe-Ntshori, Tati, and Kwe-Etshori Kwee. Zimbabwean Tjwao 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 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, except for the h sound, which is pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Examples are and pronou ...

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 stub