Khoekhoe Languages
Khoekhoe languages are part of the Khoe language family and are primarily spoken by around 200,000 individuals in Namibia, Botswana, and South Africa. Known for their unique use of click consonants, Khoekhoe languages incorporate multiple click types—dental, lateral, alveolar, and palatal—alongside varied vowel sounds and tones. This linguistic feature distinguishes them from many other languages, with about 70% of Khoe words beginning with a click. The languages traditionally reflect the pastoral and nomadic lifestyle of the Khoi people, with a rich vocabulary related to nature, animals, and agriculture.
Khoekhoe is one of Namibia's national languages and is actively used in educational settings and media. The language's written form employs a standardized Latin alphabet, supplemented by specific punctuation marks to represent its clicks. Despite the influence of European colonization, Khoekhoe maintains a high level of linguistic complexity, suggesting a long history of use. Linguists regard its distinctive phonetic characteristics as evidence of its ancient origins within human language development. The Khoikhoi people, who descend from the region's aboriginal Khoisan, continue to preserve and promote their linguistic heritage today.
Khoekhoe Languages
The Khoekhoe language group is part of the Khoe language family. The language is also known by a number of other names and is often written as Khoikhoi. It is spoken by about 200,000 people in the countries of Namibia, Botswana, and South Africa.
Khoekhoe, like all Khoe languages, includes many click consonants and diphthongs. The click consonants, which are stops made with the tongue that produce a sucking action that sounds like either a pop or a smacking sound, are dental clicks, lateral alveolar clicks, alveolar clicks, and palatal clicks. The difference is determined by where the tongue makes contact, such as on the side teeth or the roof of the mouth. Clicks are also added to roots to affect relationships between parts of speech. Most Khoe languages use four clicks, while the "kiss" click is also used in the southern languages. About 70 percent of Khoe words begin with a click.
Khoekhoe languages also include a number of phenomes, which are sounds that change the meaning of words depending on how they are used. Vowel phenomes include five oral and three nasal. Tones—low, mid, and high—may also be applied to vowels. The thirty-one consonant phenomes include twenty clicks.
The length of a vowel—long or short—affects its meaning.
Word order is usually subject-object-verb. Unlike other languages, Khoekhoe has no noun classes but relies on suffixes for pronouns to express gender, number, and person.
Suffixes on verbs indicate tense, aspect (punctual, imperfective, and perfective), and valence (passive, reflexive, and reciprocal).
History and Classification
Khoekhoe languages are a subgroup of the Khoe family, which is a branch of the Khoisan languages of Southern Africa, specifically in and around the Kalahari Desert. The primary Khoekhoe languages include some extinct dialects, which disappeared in the early twentieth century, and those spoken along the Cape’s southern coast where they were influenced by contact with European colonists. The dialects of Khoekhoe include Bondelswarts-Nama (Bondelswarts), Central Damara (Central Dama), Central Nama (Nama), Namidama, Sesfontein-Dama (Sesfontein Damara), and Topnaar-Nama (Topnaar).
The Khoisan of South Africa are the aboriginal peoples of the region. They have lived there since the fifth century CE, arriving from Botswana. The Khoekhoe, also called the Khoi, descend from the Khoisan, the natives of southwestern Africa. The San, commonly called Bushmen, are close relatives. The largest surviving group of Khoi are the Namas.
About two hundred thousand of the Damara, Haillom, and Nama people in the countries of Namibia, Botswana, and South Africa speak Khoekhoe languages.
The Khoekhoe language is very much in keeping with the lifestyle of the people, which was pastoral and nomadic. Nature was deeply important, so many words pertain to animals, hunting, planting, and the landscape.
Georg Friedricj Wreede was the first European to study the language, beginning in 1659. Four letters—F, J, L, and V—are used only in words borrowed from other languages, such as Afrikaans, English, or German. In its written form, it includes a number of punctuation marks, including exclamation points before the letters, which indicate click sounds. Tildes are also used, as are accents to indicate rising and falling tones.
Click consonants are formed in different ways. Dental clicks, which in written form are represented by a vertical line, are made by placing the tip of the tongue on the roof of one's mouth near the front teeth. The sound is described as being similar to saying "tsk, tsk"—which is a scolding sound to English speakers. A lateral click, represented by two parallel vertical lines, is made by placing the side of the tongue against the side teeth and inhaling, which many people around the world recognize and use as a universal means to urge a horse to move. The alveolar click, represented by an exclamation mark, is very loud. It is made by putting the tip of the tongue against the roof of the mouth and then curling the tongue as one snaps it down, which sounds like the clopping of a horse's hooves. The palatal click is represented by a symbol that looks like a vertical line through an equals sign. It is a softer sound made by keeping the tongue flat.
Geographic Distribution and Modern Usage
Khoekhoe is one of the national languages of Namibia—the others are English and local languages. It is widely used in education in Namibia and South Africa. Khoekhoe is also commonly used in radio programs. The written form has been standardized using a Latin alphabet.
The clicks of Khoisan languages have been adopted by other languages in Africa through contact. Clicks are original to Khoe languages, however.
Linguists point to the diversity of sounds in these and other click languages as evidence that the languages originate far back in human history. According to theory, when a people adopts parts of a language, sounds—especially sounds that are difficult to make and unfamiliar—are frequently dropped to fit the language into the existing system of sounds. Khoekhoe, which has more than one hundred sounds, likely has not been changed by speakers of other languages who have tried to learn it—it is simply too complex. English, on the other hand, gets by with forty-four sounds. Linguists believe that a language of many sounds is likely to be a primary language, meaning it has been spoken for longer than other languages.
Bibliography
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