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Palatal Click
The palatal or palato-alveolar clicks are a family of click consonants found, as components of words, only in southern Africa. The tongue is nearly flat, and is pulled back rather than down as in the postalveolar clicks, making a sharper sound than those consonants. ('Sharper' meaning that the energy is concentrated at higher frequencies.) The tongue makes an extremely broad contact across the roof of the mouth, making correlation with the places of articulation of non-clicks difficult, but Ladefoged & Traill (1984:18) find that the primary place of articulation is the palate, and say that "there is no doubt that should be described as a palatal sound". The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents the place of articulation of these sounds is , a double-barred vertical bar. An older variant, the double-barred esh, (⨎), is sometimes seen. This base letter is combined with a second element to indicate the manner of articulation, though that is commonly o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alveolar Click
The alveolar or postalveolar clicks are a family of click consonants found only in Africa and in the Damin ritual jargon of Australia. The tongue is more or less concave (depending on the language), and is pulled down rather than back as in the palatal clicks, making a hollower sound than those consonants. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents the place of articulation of these sounds is . The symbol is not an exclamation mark in origin, but rather a vertical bar with a subscript dot, the dot being the old diacritic for retroflex consonants. Prior to 1989, (stretched c) was the IPA letter for the alveolar clicks, and this is still preferred by some phoneticians. The tail of may be the tail of retroflex consonants in the IPA, and thus analogous to the underdot of . Either letter may be combined with a second letter to indicate the manner of articulation, though this is commonly omitted for tenuis clicks. In official IPA transcription, the click ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Click Letter
Various letters have been used to write the click consonants of southern Africa. The precursors of the current IPA letters, , were created by Karl Richard Lepsius and used by Wilhelm Bleek and Lucy Lloyd, who added . Also influential were Daniel Jones, who created the letters that were promoted by the IPA from 1921 to 1989, and used Clement Doke and Douglas Beach. Individual languages have had various orthographies, usually based on either the Lepsius alphabet or on the Latin alphabet. They may change over time or between countries. Latin letters, such as ''c x q ç'', have case forms; the pipe letters, ''ǀ ǁ ǃ ǂ'', do not. Multiple systems By the early 19th century, the otherwise unneeded letters ''c x q'' were used as the basis for writing clicks in Zulu by British and German missions. However, for general linguistics this was confusing, as each of these letters had other uses. There were various ''ad hoc'' attempts to create letters—often iconic symbols—for cli ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Voiceless Palato-alveolar Sibilant
A voiceless postalveolar fricative is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. The International Phonetic Association uses the term ''voiceless postalveolar fricative'' only for the sound , but it also describes the voiceless postalveolar non-sibilant fricative , for which there are significant perceptual differences. Voiceless palato-alveolar fricative A voiceless palato-alveolar fricative or voiceless domed postalveolar fricative is a type of consonantal sound used in many languages, including English. In English, it is usually spelled , as in ''ship''. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , the letter esh introduced by Isaac Pitman (not to be confused with the integral symbol ). The equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is S. An alternative symbol is , an ''s'' with a caron or ''háček'', which is used in the Americanist phonetic notation and the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet, as well as in the scientific and ISO 9 transliter ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Retroflex Click
The retroflex clicks are a family of click consonants known only from the Central !Kung dialects of Namibia. They are sub-apical retroflex and should not be confused with the more widespread postalveolar clicks, which are sometimes mistakenly called "retroflex" (for example in Unicode) due to their concave tongue shape. There is no official symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents the forward articulation of these sounds, and the expected symbol is rarely seen. In the literature they are typically written with the ''ad hoc'' digraph , the convention since Doke identified them as retroflex in 1926. (Doke's proposed symbol, , did not catch on, nor did Vedder's and Anders' . For a while Amanda Miller, who noted a lateral fricated release (as had Vedder), transcribed them .) The Damin ritual jargon of Australia may have had a voiced nasal click, transcribed by Hale & Nash as , though it's not known if it was phonemically distinct. However, Damin presumably h ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
ǂHaba Language
ǂHaba (ǂHabá) is a variety of the Khoe languages spoken in Botswana. Traditionally included in the Gǁana dialect cluster, it appears to be closer to Naro Naro ( scn, Naru ) is a ''comune'' in the province of Agrigento, on the island of Sicily, Italy. It is bounded by the comuni of Agrigento, Caltanissetta, Camastra, Campobello di Licata, Canicattì, Castrofilippo, Delia, Favara, Licata, Pal .... It is endangered, with most ǂHaba speaking Naro. Phonology ǂHaba has the click inventory of Naro, with the glottalized series that not all Naro dialects have. There are seven tones in (bimoraic) roots with a nasal onset (high and mid level, high and low falling, mid–low, low–mid, and low–high), six tones with a voiceless onset, and four tones elsewhere (voiced but not nasal). Notes References *Hirosi Nakagawa (2011) 'ǂHaba Tonology'. ''4th International Symposium on Khoisan Languages and Linguistics,'' Riezlern. External linksǂHaba basic lexicon at the Global L ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Taa Language
Taa , also known as ǃXóõ (also spelled ǃKhong and ǃXoon; ), is a Tuu language notable for its large number of phonemes, perhaps the largest in the world. It is also notable for having perhaps the heaviest functional load of click consonants, with one count finding that 82% of basic vocabulary items started with a click. Most speakers live in Botswana, but a few hundred live in Namibia. The people call themselves ǃXoon (pl. ǃXooŋake) or ʼNǀohan (pl. Nǀumde), depending on the dialect they speak. The Tuu languages are one of the three traditional language families that make up the Khoisan languages. is the word for 'human being'; the local name of the language is , from 'language'. (ǃXóõ) is an ethnonym used at opposite ends of the Taa-speaking area, but not by Taa speakers in between. Most living Taa speakers are ethnic ǃXoon (plural ) or 'Nǀohan (plural ). Taa shares a number of characteristic features with West ǂʼAmkoe and Gǀui, which together are cons ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Xhosa Language
Xhosa (, ) also isiXhosa as an endonym, is a Nguni language and one of the official languages of South Africa and Zimbabwe. Xhosa is spoken as a first language by approximately 8.2 million people and by another 11 million as a second language in South Africa, mostly in Eastern Cape, Western Cape, Northern Cape and Gauteng. It has perhaps the heaviest functional load of click consonants in a Bantu language (approximately tied with Yeyi), with one count finding that 10% of basic vocabulary items contained a click. Classification Xhosa is part of the branch of Nguni languages, which also include Zulu, Southern Ndebele and Northern Ndebele. Nguni languages effectively form a dialect continuum of variously mutually intelligible varieties. Xhosa is, to some extent, mutually intelligible with Zulu and with other Nguni languages to a lesser extent. Nguni languages are, in turn, classified under the much larger abstraction of Bantu languages. Geographical distribution ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Zulu Language
Zulu (), or isiZulu as an endonym, is a Southern Bantu language of the Nguni branch spoken in Southern Africa. It is the language of the Zulu people, with about 12 million native speakers, who primarily inhabit the province of KwaZulu-Natal of South Africa. Zulu is the most widely spoken home language in South Africa (24% of the population), and it is understood by over 50% of its population. It became one of South Africa's 11 official languages in 1994. According to Ethnologue, it is the second-most-widely spoken of the Bantu languages, after Swahili. Like many other Bantu languages, it is written with the Latin alphabet. In South African English, the language is often referred to in its native form, ''isiZulu''. Geographical distribution Zulu migrant populations have taken it to adjacent regions, especially Zimbabwe, where the Northern Ndebele language ( isiNdebele) is closely related to Zulu. Xhosa, the predominant language in the Eastern Cape, is often considered ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Yeyi Language
Yeyi (autoethnonym ''Shiyɛyi'') is a Bantu language spoken by many of the approximately 50,000 Yeyi people along the Okavango River in Namibia and Botswana. Yeyi, influenced by Juu languages, is one of several Bantu languages along the Okavango with clicks. Indeed, it has the largest known inventory of clicks of any Bantu language, with dental, alveolar, palatal, and lateral articulations. Though most of its older speakers prefer Yeyi in normal conversation, it is being gradually phased out in Botswana by a popular move towards Tswana, with Yeyi only being learned by children in a few villages. Yeyi speakers in the Caprivi Strip of north-eastern Namibia, however, retain Yeyi in villages (including Linyanti), but may also speak the regional lingua franca, Lozi. The main dialect is called Shirwanga. A slight majority of Botswana Yeyi are monolingual in the national language, Tswana, and most of the rest are bilingual. Classification Yeyi appears to be a divergent lineage of Ba ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tuu Languages
The Tuu languages, or Taa–ǃKwi (Taa–ǃUi, ǃUi–Taa, Kwi) languages, are a language family consisting of two language clusters spoken in Botswana and South Africa. The relationship between the two clusters is not doubted, but is distant. The name ''Tuu'' comes from a word common to both branches of the family for "person". History The ancestor of Tuu languages, Proto-Tuu, was presumably also spoken in or around the Kalahari desert, as a word for the gemsbok (''*!hai'') is reconstructable to Proto-Tuu. There is evidence of substantial borrowing of words between Tuu languages and other Khoisan languages, including basic vocabulary. Khoekhoe in particular is thought to have a Tuu (!Ui branch) substrate. Examples of borrowings from Khoe into Tuu include 'chest' (ǃXóõ ''gǁúu'' from Khoe ''*gǁuu'') and 'chin' (Nǁng ''gǃann'' from Khoe ''*ǃann''). A root for 'louse' shared by some Khoe and Tuu languages (''ǁxóni''~''kx'uni''~''kx'uri'') has been suggested as deriv ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
