Khoekhoe language

Not to be confused with Nama language (Papuan).

Khoekhoe
Khoekhoegowab
Spoken in	Namibia, Botswana and South Africa
Region	Orange River, Great Namaland
Ethnicity	Khoikhoi, Nama, Damara
Native speakers	250,000  (2006) plus possibly 50,000 Haiǁom (no date)
Language family	Khoe Khoekhoe Khoekhoe
Dialects	Nama–Damara Haiǁom ǂĀkhoe
Official status
Official language in	National language in Namibia
Regulated by	No official regulation
Language codes
ISO 639-3	Either: hgm – Haiǁom naq – Nama
The distribution of the Nama language in Namibia.

The Khoekhoe language, or Khoekhoegowab, also known by the ethnic term Nàmá and previously the now-discouraged term Hottentot, is the most widespread of the Khoisan languages. It belongs to the Khoe language family, and is spoken in Namibia, Botswana, and South Africa by three ethnic groups, the Nama, Damara, and Haiǁom. It appears that the Damara picked up the language from the Nama in Botswana, and that they migrated to Namibia separately from the Nama. The Haiǁom, who had spoken a Juu language, later shifted to Khoekhoe. The name for Nama speakers, Khoekhoen, is from the Nama word khoe "person", with reduplication and the suffix -n to indicate the plural. Georg Friedrich Wreede was the first European to study the language, after arriving in Cape Town in 1659.

Khoekhoe is a national language in Namibia. In Namibia and South Africa, radio programs are broadcast in it. In Namibia, it is used for teaching up to the university level, as well as in the administration.

Dialects

• ǂĀkhoe (itself a dialect cluster)
• Sesfontein Damara (said to be mutually unintelligible)
• Nama – Central Damara
• Haiǁom
• Eini (extinct)

These are sometimes counted as distinct languages.

Phonology

Vowels

There are 5 vowel qualities, found as oral /i e a o u/ and nasal /ĩ ã ũ/. /u/ is strongly rounded, /o/ only slightly so. /a/ is the only vowel with notable allophony; it is pronounced [ə] before /i/ or /u/.

Tone

Nama has three tones, /á, ā, à/, which may occur on each mora (vowels and final nasal stops). The high tone is higher when it occurs on one of the high vowels (/í ú/ or a nasal (/ń ḿ/) than on mid or low vowels (/é á ó/).

Stress

Within a phrase, lexical words receive greater stress than grammatical words. Within a word, the first syllable receives the most stress. Subsequent syllables receive less and less stress, and are spoken more and more quickly.

Consonants

Nama has 31 consonants: 20 clicks and a simple set of 11 non-clicks.

Non-clicks

	Bilabial	Alveolar	Velar	Glottal
Nasal	m	n
Plosive	p ~ β	t ~ ɾ	k	ʔ
Affricate		t͡s	k͡x
Fricative		s	x	h

Between vowels, /p/ is pronounced [β] and /t/ is pronounced [ɾ].

Beach (1938) reported that the Khoehkoe of the time had a velar lateral ejective affricate, [kʼ], a common realization or allophone of /kxʼ/ in languages with clicks. This sound no longer occurs in Khoekhoe, but remains in its cousin Korana.

Clicks

The clicks are doubly articulated consonants. Each click consists of one of four primary articulations or "influxes" and one of five secondary articulation or "effluxes". The combination results in 20 phonemes. The affricated "effluxes" is a contour, a transition from a click to a non-click articulation. Miller (2011), in a comparative study with other languages, interprets their results as follows,

accompaniment	affricated clicks		'sharp' clicks		standardized orthography (with "ǃ")
	dental clicks	lateral clicks	alveolar clicks	palatal clicks
Tenuis	ǀ	ǁ	ǃ	ǂ	⟨ǃg⟩
Nasal	ᵑǀ	ᵑǁ	ᵑǃ	ᵑǂ	⟨ǃn⟩
Voiceless aspirated nasal	ᵑ̊ǀʰ	ᵑ̊ǁʰ	ᵑ̊ǃʰ	ᵑ̊ǂʰ	⟨ǃh⟩
Glottalized nasal	ᵑ̊ǀˀ	ᵑ̊ǁˀ	ᵑ̊ǃˀ	ᵑ̊ǂˀ	⟨ǃ⟩
Fricative contour	ǀ͡χ	ǁ͡χ	ǃ͡χ	ǂ͡χ	⟨ǃkh⟩

The affrication on the contour clicks is often light, but is 'raspier' than the aspirated clicks, with a sound like the ch of Scottish loch. The glottalized clicks are clearly voiceless, due to the hold before the release, and they are transcribed as simple voiceless clicks in the traditional orthography. The nasal component is not audible in initial position; the voiceless nasal component of the aspirated clicks is also difficult to hear when not between vowels, so to foreign ears it may sound like a longer but less raspy version of the contour clicks.

Phonotactics

Lexical root words consist of two or rarely three moras, in the form CVCV(C), CVV(C), or CVN(C). (The initial consonant is required.) The middle consonant may only be w r m n (w is b~p and r is d~t), while the final consonant (C) may only be p, s, ts. Each mora carries tone, but the second may only be high or medium, for six tone "melodies": HH, MH, LH, HM, MM, LM.

Oral vowel sequences in CVV are /ii ee aa oo uu ai [əi] ae ao au [əu] oa oe ui/. Due to the reduced number of nasal vowels, nasal sequences are /ĩĩ ãã ũũ ãĩ [ə̃ĩ] ãũ [ə̃ũ] õã ũĩ/. Sequences ending in a high vowel (/ii uu ai au ui ĩĩ ũũ ãĩ ãũ ũĩ/) are pronounced more quickly than others (/ee aa oo ae ao oa oe ãã õã/), more like diphthongs and long vowels than like vowel sequences in hiatus. The tones are realized as contours. CVCV words tend to have the same vowel sequences, though there are many exceptions. The two tones are also more distinct.

Vowel-nasal sequences are restricted to non-front vowels: /am an om on um un/. Their tones are also realized as contours.

Grammatical particles have the form CV or CN, with any vowel or tone, where C may be any consonant but a click, and the latter cannot be NN. Suffixes, and a third mora of a root, may have the form CV, CN, V, N, with any vowel or tone; there are also three C-only suffixes, -p 1m.sg, -ts 2m.sg, -s 2/3f.sg.

Orthography

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. W is only used between vowels, though it may be replaced with b or p according to melody.

Nasal vowels are written with a tilde, on the second vowel in CVV words. Long (double) vowels are written with a macron, or with a circumflex if they carry high tone, as in hû 'seven'. Otherwise, overt tone marking is generally omitted.

Grammar

Nama has a subject–object–verb word order and has three gender classes: male, female and neuter. Male and female nouns have a singular, dual and plural; while neuter nouns only have singular and plural number.

	singular	dual	plural
Female	piris	pirira	piridi	goat
Male	arib	arikha	arigu	dog
Neuter	khoe-i	n/a	khoen	people

Khoekhoe distinguishes between inclusive and exclusive 1st person plural pronouns. Sida is the exclusive form for we, it only includes a specific group; as opposed to sada, which is inclusive and refers to all.

Sample text

Following is a sample text in the Khoekhoe language.

Nē ǀkharib ǀnâ da ge ǁgûn tsî ǀgaen tsî doan tsîn; tsî ǀnopodi tsî ǀkhenadi tsî ǀhuigu tsî ǀamin tsîn; tsî ǀkharagagu ǀaon tsîna ra hō.

In this region we find springbuck, oryx, and duiker; francolin, guinea fowl, bustard, and ostrich; and also various kinds of snake.

Common words and phrases

• ǃGãi tses - Good day
• ǃGãi ǁhoas - Good morning
• ǃGãi ǃhoes - Good evening
• Matisa - How are you?
• ǃGãise ǃgu re - Goodbye
• ǃHaese mugus - See you soon

Bibliography

• Beach, Douglas M. 1938. The phonetics of the Hottentot language. Cambridge: Heffer.
• Haacke, Wilfrid. 1976. A Nama grammar: the noun-phrase. MA thesis. University of Cape Town.
• Haacke, Wilfrid H. G. 1977. "The so-called "personal pronoun" in Nama. In Traill, Anthony, ed., Khoisan linguistic studies 3, 43-62. Communications 6. Johannesburg: African Studies Institute, University of the Witwatersrand.
• Haacke, Wilfrid. 1978. Subject deposition in Nama. MA thesis. University of Essex. Colchester (UK).
• Haacke, Wilfrid. 1992. "Compound noun phrases in Nama". In Derek F. Gowlett, ed., African linguistic contributions (Festschrift Ernst Westphal), 189-194. Pretoria: Via Afrika.
• Haacke, Wilfrid. 1992. "Dislocated noun phrases in Khoekhoe (Nama/Damara): further evidence for the sentential hypothesis". Afrikanistische Arbeitspapiere, 29, 149-162.
• Haacke, Wilfrid. 1995. "Instances of incorporation and compounding in Khoekhoegowab (Nama/Damara)". In Anthony Traill, Rainer Vossen and Marguerite Anne Megan Biesele, eds., The complete linguist: papers in memory of Patrick J. Dickens", 339-361. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag.
• Haacke, Wilfrid, Eliphas Eiseb and Levi Namaseb. 1997. Internal and external relations of Khoekhoe dialects: a preliminary survey". In Wilfrid Haacke & Edward D. Elderkin, eds., Namibian languages: reports and papers, 125-209. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag for the University of Namibia.
• Haacke, Wilfrid. 1999. The tonology of Khoekhoe (Nama/Damara). Quellen zur Khoisan-Forschung/Research in Khoisan studies, Bd 16. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag.
• Haacke, Wilfrid H.G. & Eiseb, Eliphas (2002) A Khoekhoegowab dictionary with an English-Khoekhoegowab index. Windhoek : Gamsberg Macmillan. ISBN 99916-0-401-4
• Hagman, Roy S. 1977. Nama Hottentot grammar. Language science monographs, v 15. Bloomington: Indiana University.
• Hahn, Theophilus. 1870. Die Sprache der Nama, nebst einem Anhang enthaltend Sprachproben aus dem Munde des Volkes. Redigierte Ausgabe eine Dissertation mit einem Anhang über Mythen der Khoi-khoin nebst Übersetzung und Wörterverzeichnis. Leipzig: Johann Ambrosius Barth.

External links

• Map of Nàmá language (Khoekhoe) from the LL-Map Project
• Information about Nàmá language from the MultiTree Project
• Nama grammar and a story at Cornell (dead link as of January 2009; cached by the Internet Archive)
• Nama Information from Rosetta Project (dead link as of 17-Oct-2010)
• The Ethnologue report for Nama
• The Ethnologue report for Haiǁʼom
• Nama (KhoeKhoegowab) Phrase Video Lessons
• KhoeSan Active Awareness Group (dead link as of 17-Oct-2010)