ǂAakhoe (ǂĀkhoe) and Haiǁom are part of the

Khoekhoe Khoekhoen (singular Khoekhoe) (or Khoikhoi in the former orthography; formerly also '' Hottentots''"Hottentot, n. and adj." ''OED Online'', Oxford University Press, March 2018, www.oed.com/view/Entry/88829. Accessed 13 May 2018. Citing G. S. ...

dialect continuum and are spoken mainly in

Namibia Namibia (, ), officially the Republic of Namibia, is a country in Southern Africa. Its western border is the Atlantic Ocean. It shares land borders with Zambia and Angola to the north, Botswana to the east and South Africa to the south and ea ...

.DOBES documentation project on Haiǁom
/ref> In the sparsely available material on the subject, ǂAkhoe and Haiǁom have been considered a variant of the Khoekhoe language, as separate dialects (Haacke et al. 1997), as virtual synonyms of a single variant (Heikinnen, n.d.), or as "a way in which some Haiǁom speak their language in the northern part of Namibia" (Widlock, n.d.). ǂAkhoe especially is intermediate between the Khoekhoe and Kalahari branches of the Khoe language family.

The people

The Haiǁom are traditionally

hunter-gatherer A traditional hunter-gatherer or forager is a human living an ancestrally derived lifestyle in which most or all food is obtained by foraging, that is, by gathering food from local sources, especially edible wild plants but also insects, fungi, ...

s, and many aspects of this traditional culture have been preserved in spite of the political, economic, and linguistic marginalisation of the group. 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 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 ''Ethnologue'' there were 48,400 Haiǁom speakers in 2006, but as with all figures on people and languages of low reputation this count might not be very reliable.

Grammar

In theory ǂAkhoe possesses free word order, with the

subject–object–verb Subject ( la, subiectus "lying beneath") may refer to: Philosophy *'' Hypokeimenon'', or ''subiectum'', in metaphysics, the "internal", non-objective being of a thing **Subject (philosophy), a being that has subjective experiences, subjective con ...

order (SOV) being the 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 is an interrogative used freely in Haiǁom, the subject '', ũ'' takes the suffix ''-ba'', which is a PGN marker denoting the 3rd person masculine singular. 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 and vary widely in the combination of word categories. The possibilities include: noun+noun, noun+adverb or vice versa, noun+adjective or vice versa, adjective+adjective, adjective+adverb or vice versa, adjective+suffix, or multiple combinations of the above.

Phonology

Comparing Heikinnen's and Widlock's contribution to ǂAkhoe phonology with the more general and theoretical phonological work of Peter Ladefoged (1996),Ladefoged, Peter & Maddieson, Ian (1996), pp. 246–260. ǂAkhoe can be said to have 47 phonemes. However, an in-depth phonological sketch of the language might show other results where the vowels are concerned.

Consonants

There are 34 consonants in ǂAkhoe, 20 of which are clicks produced with an ingressive airstream, and 14 of which are

pulmonic consonant A pulmonic consonant is a consonant produced by air pressure from the lungs, as opposed to ejective, implosive and click consonants. Most languages have only pulmonic consonants. Ian Maddieson, in his survey of 566 languages,Ian Maddieson (2008) " ...

s produced with an egressive airstream.

Vowels

ǂAkhoe Haiǁom has a total of 12 vowel phonemes. These can be divided into monophthongs and diphthongs, with a further subdivision into oral and nasal pronunciation. ;Monophtongs: and . ;Diphthongs: and .

References

Bibliography

*Haacke, W. (1988) ''Nama, Damara I, Guide 2: Morphology 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

Haiom in the Etosha region: a history of colonial settlement, ethnicity and Nature Conservation
via Google Books
Undiscovered or Overlooked: The Haiom of Namibia
{{DEFAULTSORT:ǂAakhoe Language Khoe languages Languages of South Africa Languages of Botswana Languages of Namibia Ethnic groups in Namibia