Korana language
| Korana | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ǃOra | ||||
| Spoken in | South Africa, maybe Botswana | |||
| Native speakers | a handful (2009) | |||
| Language family |
Khoe
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| Language codes | ||||
| ISO 639-3 | kqz | |||
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Korana, or ǃOra, is a moribund Khoe language of South Africa. An ethnic Korana population (also called Griqua) of 10,000 live in South Africa, and perhaps Botswana, with perhaps half a dozen elderly speakers as of 2008.
Korana is related to Khoekhoe, and the sound systems are broadly similar. However, Korana has an ejective velar affricate, /kxʼ/, which is not found in Khoekhoe, and a corresponding series of clicks, /ǀ͡χʼ ǁ͡χʼ ǃ͡χʼ ǂ͡χʼ/. Beach (1938)[1] reported that the Khoehkoe of the time had a velar lateral ejective affricate, [kʼ], a common realization or allophone of /kxʼ/ in languages with clicks, and it might be expected that this is true for Korana as well. In addition, about half of all lexical words in Korana began with a click, compared to a quarter in Khoekhoe.
Korana is principally recorded in a notebook by Carl Meinhof from 1879 which contains five short stories; some addition work was done in Ponelis (1975).[2] As of 2009, EuroBABEL project is searching for remaining speakers.
[edit] References
- ^ D. Beach, 1938. The Phonetics of the Hottentot Language. Cambridge.
- ^ Ponelis, F. A. (1975). "!Ora clicks: problems and speculations." Bushman and Hottentot linguistic studies, pp 51–60. ed. Anthony Traill. Communications from the African Studies Institute, no 2. University of the Witwatersrand. Johannesburg.
[edit] External links
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