Khoekhoe language
Khoekhoe /ˈkɔɪkɔɪ/ KOY-koy (Khoekhoegowab, Khoekhoe pronunciation: [k͡xʰo̜͡ek͡xʰo̜͡egowab]), also known by the ethnic terms Nama (Namagowab) /ˈnɑːmə/ NAH-mə,[3] Damara (ǂNūkhoegowab), or Nama/Damara[4][5] and formerly as Hottentot,[b] is the most widespread of the non-Bantu languages of Southern Africa that make heavy use of click consonants and therefore were formerly classified as Khoisan, a grouping now recognized as obsolete. It belongs to the Khoe language family, and is spoken in Namibia, Botswana, and South Africa primarily by three ethnic groups: Namakhoen, ǂNūkhoen, and Haiǁomkhoen.
"Nama language" redirects here. For other uses, see Nama language (disambiguation).Khoekhoe
[k͡xʰo̜͡ek͡xʰo̜͡egowab]
Namibia, Botswana and South Africa
200,000 ± 10,000 (2011)[1]
-
Khoe
- Khoekhoe
- Khoekhoe
- Khoekhoe
- Nama–Damara
- Haiǁom–ǂĀkhoe
Khoe-i
Khoekhoen
Khoekhoegowab
History[edit]
The Haiǁom, who had spoken a Juu language, later shifted to Khoekhoe. The name for the speakers, Khoekhoen, is from the word khoe "person", with reduplication and the suffix -n to indicate the general plural. Georg Friedrich Wreede was the first European to study the language, after arriving in ǁHui!gaeb (later Cape Town) in 1659.
Status[edit]
Khoekhoe is a national language in Namibia. In Namibia and South Africa, state-owned broadcasting corporations produce and broadcast radio programmes in Khoekhoe.
It is estimated that only around 167,000 speakers of Khoekhoe remain in Africa, which makes it an endangered language. In 2019, the University of Cape Town ran a series of short courses teaching the language, and 21 September 2020 launched its new Khoi and San Centre. An undergraduate degree programme is being planned to be rolled out in coming years.[7]
Modern scholars generally see three dialects:
They are distinct enough that they might be considered two or three distinct languages.
There have been several orthographies used for Nama. A Khoekhoegowab dictionary (Haacke 2000) uses the modern standard.
In standard orthography, the consonants b d g are used for words with one of the lower tone melodies and p t k for one of the higher tone melodies; they are otherwise pronounced the same. W is only used between vowels, though it may be replaced with b or p according to tone. Overt tone marking is otherwise generally omitted.
Nasal vowels are written with a circumflex. All nasal vowels are long, as in hû /hũ̀ṹ/ 'seven'. Long (double) vowels are otherwise written with a macron, as in ā /ʔàa̋/ 'to cry, weep'; these constitute two moras (two tone-bearing units).
A glottal stop is not written at the beginning of a word (where it is predictable), but it is transcribed with a hyphen in compound words, such as gao-aob /kȁòʔòȁp/ 'chief'.
The clicks are written using the IPA symbols:
Sometimes other characters are substituted, e.g. the hash (#) in place of ǂ.[15]
