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ǂAkhoe Haiǁom
Native to	Namibia, South Africa, Angola and Botswana
Region	Etosha Salt Pan, Kavango, Mangetti Dune], Omataku, Grootfontein, Baghani], Tsintsabis and Maroelaboom.
Native speakers	48,400 (2006)
Language family	Khoisan Southern Africa Central Hainum ǂAkhoe Haiǁom
Language codes
ISO 639-3	hgm

When speaking about the ǂAkhoe Haiǁom as a people, they are traditionally profiled as hunter-gatherers and many aspects of their traditional culture have been preserved, despite the political, economic and linguistic marginalisation of their group. Some characteristical features of their culture include healing trance dances, hunting magic, intensive usage of wild plant and insect food, a unique kinship and naming system, frequent storytelling, and the use of a landscape-term system for spatial orientation.

The ǂAkhoe Haiǁom live in the savannah of northern Namibia, in an area stretching from the edges of Etosha salt pan and the northern white farming areas as far as the Angola border – and perhaps beyond – in the north and Kavango in the east. According to the Ethnologue website there were 48,400 ǂAkhoe Haiǁom speakers in 2006, but as with all figures on people and languages of low reputation this count might not be very reliable.

Language

When talking about ǂAkhoe Haiǁom as a language it has been proven hard to reach a consensus of what exactly is meant by the term. In the sparsely available material on the subject, ǂAkhoe Haiǁom has been considered a variant of the Khoekhoe language, seen as separate dialects (Haacke et al. 1997), as virtual synonyms of one single variant (Heikinnen, n.d.) or even as a way to denote “a way in which some Haiǁom speak their language in the northern part of Namibia” (Widlock, n.d.). Generally ǂAkhoe Haiǁom is classified as a Central Khoisan language and a member of the Khoekhoegowabdialect continuum.

Grammar

In theory ǂAkhoe Haiǀǀom possesses free word order, with the subject-object-verb order (SOV) being the most dominant preference. In keeping with the typological profile of SOV languages, adjectives, demonstratives and numerals generally precede nouns. Nouns are marked by person-gender-number (PGN) markers. Adjectives, demonstratives and numerals, all agree with their head noun.

Mãa |ũ-ba nde-ba?

what hair-3SGM this-3SGM

“What colour is this?”

Mãa is an interrogative used freely in Haiǁom, the subject |ũ takes the suffix –ba, which is a PGN marker, denoting the 3rd person singular masculine. The indirect object nde, a demonstrative, follows the noun, and is inflected in concord with the head noun.

Compound structures are highly productive in ǂAkhoe Haiǀǀom and vary widely in the combination of word categories. The possiblities include: noun+noun, noun+adverb or vice versa, noun+adjective or vice versa, adjective+adjective, adjective+adverb or vice versa, adjective+suffix or even multiple combinations of the above.

Phonology

Comparing Heikinnen’s and Widlock’s contribution to ǂAkhoe Haiǁom phonology with the more general and theoretical phonological work of Peter Ladefoged (1996), ǂAkhoe Haiǁom can be said to have 47 phonemes. However, a complete indepth phonological sketch of the language might show other results where the vowels are concerned.

Consonants

There are 34 contrastive manifestations of consonants in ǂAkhoe Haiǁom, 20 of which are produced with an ingressive airstream, a.k.a clicks, and 14 of which are produced with an egressive airstream. Clicks are doubly articulated consonants. Each click consists of one of four primary articulations called influxes and one of three secondary articulations called accompaniments, which can be even further divided . In ǂAkhoe Haiǁom the combination of influxes and accompaniments results in 20 phonemes.

Accompaniment and Influx	Dental	Avleolar	Palatal	Lateral
VL unaspirated	ǀg [kǀ]	ǂg [kǂ]	!g [k!]	ǁg [kǁ]
VL aspirated	ǀkh [ǀˣ]	ǂkh [ǂˣ]	!kh [!ˣ]	ǁkh [ǁˣ]
VL nasalised	ǀh [ǀ]	ǂh [ǂˣ]	!h [!ˣ]	ǁh [ǁˣ]
VD nasalised	ǀn [ŋǀʰ]	ǂn [ŋǂʰ]	!n [ŋ!ʰ]	ǁn [ŋǁʰ]
Glottal closure	ǀ [kǀʔ	ǂkh [kǂʔ]	! [k!ʔ]	ǁ [kǁʔ]

	Bilabial	Dental	Avleolar	Velar	Glottal
Stop plain	b [p]	t [ʈ]		k [k]
Stop nasalised	mb [mb]	nd [mb]
VL affricate			tsh [tʃ]	kh [kh]
VD affricate			ndz [nʒ]
Fricative			s	x	h [ɦ]
Flap			ɾ
Nasal		m		n

Vowels

ǂAkhoe Haiǁom has a total of 12 vowel phonemes. These can be divided into monoph- and diphtongs, with a further subdivision into oral and nasal pronunciation.

Monophtongs:{{IPA|/i e a o u/ and /ĩ ã ũ/.

Diphtongs:/ai au/ and /ãi ãu/.

See also

• Original People's Party of Namibia, a political party in colonial Namibia led by Theophilus Soroseb, a member of the Haiǁom and Ovambo groups
• [1] Undiscovered or Overlooked: The Haiom of Namibia]

Bibliography

Haacke, W. (1988) Nama|Damara I, Guide 2: Morpholog and syntax, Mimeographed.

Haacke, W., E. Eiseb, L. Namaseb (1997) “Internal and External Relations of Khoekhoe Dialects, a Preliminary Survey”, in W. Haacke and E. Elderkin (eds.), Namibian Languages: Reports and Papers, Köln: Köppe.

Heikinnen, T. (n.d.), A Description of the language of ≠Akhoen, unpublished manuscript.

Ladefoged, Peter & Maddieson, Ian (1996) "The sounds of the world's languages", Oxford: Blackwell.

Widlock, T. (n.d.) A Haiǁom sourcebook: The T. Heikinnen Papers, unpublished manuscript.

External links

• DOBES documentation project on Haiǁom [2]
• Haiom in the Etosha region: a history of colonial settlement, ethnicity and Nature Conservation via Google Books