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Taa Language
Taa , also known as ǃXóõ (also spelled ǃKhong and ǃXoon; ), is a Tuu languages, 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 ǂʼAmkoe language, West ǂʼAmkoe an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Botswana
Botswana (, ), officially the Republic of Botswana ( tn, Lefatshe la Botswana, label= Setswana, ), is a landlocked country in Southern Africa. Botswana is topographically flat, with approximately 70 percent of its territory being the Kalahari Desert. It is bordered by South Africa to the south and southeast, Namibia to the west and north, and Zimbabwe to the northeast. It is connected to Zambia across the short Zambezi River border by the Kazungula Bridge. A country of slightly over 2.3 million people, Botswana is one of the most sparsely populated countries in the world. About 11.6 percent of the population lives in the capital and largest city, Gaborone. Formerly one of the world's poorest countries—with a GDP per capita of about US$70 per year in the late 1960s—it has since transformed itself into an upper-middle-income country, with one of the world's fastest-growing economies. Modern-day humans first inhabited the country over 200,000 years ago. The Tswana ethn ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sprachbund
A sprachbund (, lit. "language federation"), also known as a linguistic area, area of linguistic convergence, or diffusion area, is a group of languages that share areal features resulting from geographical proximity and language contact. The languages may be genetically unrelated, or only distantly related, but the sprachbund characteristics might give a false appearance of relatedness. A grouping of languages that share features can only be defined as a sprachbund if the features are shared for some reason other than the genetic history of the languages. Because of this, attempts to classify some language families without knowledge about the history of the languages can lead to misclassification as sprachbunds and similarly some sprachbunds are incorrectly classified as language families. History In a 1904 paper, Jan Baudouin de Courtenay emphasised the need to distinguish between language similarities arising from a genetic relationship (''rodstvo'') and those arising from ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Consonant Cluster
In linguistics, a consonant cluster, consonant sequence or consonant compound, is a group of consonants which have no intervening vowel. In English, for example, the groups and are consonant clusters in the word ''splits''. In the education field it is variously called a consonant cluster or a consonant blend. Some linguists argue that the term can be properly applied only to those consonant clusters that occur within one syllable. Others claim that the concept is more useful when it includes consonant sequences across syllable boundaries. According to the former definition, the longest consonant clusters in the word ''extra'' would be and , whereas the latter allows , which is phonetically in some accents. Phonotactics Each language has an associated set of phonotactic constraints. Languages' phonotactics differ as to what consonant clusters they permit. Many languages are more restrictive than English in terms of consonant clusters, and some forbid consonant clusters ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Segment (linguistics)
In linguistics, a segment is "any discrete unit that can be identified, either physically or auditorily, in the stream of speech". The term is most used in phonetics and phonology to refer to the smallest elements in a language, and this usage can be synonymous with the term phone. In spoken languages, segments will typically be grouped into consonants and vowels, but the term can be applied to any minimal unit of a linear sequence meaningful to the given field of analysis, such as a mora or a syllable in prosodic phonology, a morpheme in morphology, or a chereme in sign language analysis. Segments are called "discrete" because they are, at least at some analytical level, separate and individual, and temporally ordered. Segments are generally not completely discrete in speech production or perception, however. The articulatory, visual and acoustic cues that encode them often overlap. Examples of overlap for spoken languages can be found in discussions of phonological assim ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Phonation
The term phonation has slightly different meanings depending on the subfield of phonetics. Among some phoneticians, ''phonation'' is the process by which the vocal folds produce certain sounds through quasi-periodic vibration. This is the definition used among those who study laryngeal anatomy and physiology and speech production in general. Phoneticians in other subfields, such as linguistic phonetics, call this process '' voicing'', and use the term ''phonation'' to refer to any oscillatory state of any part of the larynx that modifies the airstream, of which voicing is just one example. Voiceless and supra-glottal phonations are included under this definition. Voicing The phonatory process, or voicing, occurs when air is expelled from the lungs through the glottis, creating a pressure drop across the larynx. When this drop becomes sufficiently large, the vocal folds start to oscillate. The minimum pressure drop required to achieve phonation is called the phonation thresho ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jinhui Dialect
The Jinhui dialect (), also known as Dônđäc (), is a dialect of Wu Chinese spoken in the town of , China in Shanghai's suburban Fengxian District. It has about 100,000 native speakers. Jinhui is located near the border of the ancient states of Wu and Yue during the Spring and Autumn period. Like other Wu dialects, Dônđäc has preserved many special features of the Old Yue language. Dônđäc has 20 oral vowel qualities, plus many nasal and rhotic ones. According to a Fudan University study that was published in the journal ''Science'', Dônđäc has the largest oral vowel quality inventory in the world (phonemically speaking), and ranks highest in overall phonemic diversity among all languages studied in the research. According to linguist Qian Nairong, who spent eight years teaching in Fengxian and studying its dialects, the reason Dônđäc has so many vowels is because Jinhui is the place where five isoglosses intersect. Phonology Jinhui has 20 oral vowel phonemes, comp ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ernst Oswald Johannes Westphal
Ernst Oswald Johannes Gotthard Gotthilf Westphal ( Khalava in Venda, South Africa, 1919 - Bredasdorp near Cape Town, South Africa, 27 November 1990), was a South African linguist and an expert in Bantu and Khoisan languages. From 1949 to 1962 he taught at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. Biography Ernst Westphal was born at Khalava in Venda, the son of German Lutheran missionary parents. His father was Gotthard Westphal and his grandfather, also Ernst Westphal, was with his wife Wilhelmine the teacher and mentor of Solomon Plaatje. Already as a child E.O.J. Westphal was fluent in German, English, and Afrikaans, like many South Africans. His first and native language, however, was Venda, and as a child he was initiated into the partly secret Venda rites for young men. He studied Zulu and Southern Sotho under Clement Martyn Doke at the University of the Witwatersrand and, after graduating in 1942, was a Lecturer there 1942-1947. He wa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lower Nossob Language
Lower Nossob is an extinct Khoisan language once spoken along the Nossob River The Nossob (also Nosob or Nossop) River (''ǂnuse ǃab'', Khoikhoi for black river) is a dry river bed in eastern Namibia and the Kalahari region of South Africa and Botswana. It covers a distance of 740 km and last flooded in 1989. The ri ... on the border of South Africa and Botswana, near Namibia. It was closely related to the Taa language. There are two attested dialects: ǀʼAuni (ǀʼAuo), recorded by Dorothea Bleek, and ǀHaasi, recorded by Robert Story. ǀʼAuni is the word the former use for themselves; ǀʼAuo (or ǀʼAu) is what they call their language. ''ǀauni, ǁauni, Auni'' are misspellings. Other renderings of the name ǀHaasi are ''Kʼuǀha꞉si, Kiǀhasi,'' and ''Kiǀhazi.''Yvonne Treis, 1998, "Names of Khoisan Languages and their Variants" References External links ǀʼAuni and ǀHaasi basic lexicon at the Global Lexicostatistical Database {{Khoisan Tuu language ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dorothea Bleek
Dorothea Frances Bleek (later Dorothy F. Bleek; born 26 March 1873, Mowbray, Cape Town – died 27 June 1948, Newlands, Cape Town) was a South African-born German anthropologist and philologist known for her research on the Bushmen (the San people) of southern Africa. Life and work Dorothea Bleek was the fifth daughter of Wilhelm Bleek, a pioneering philologist studying the languages and cultures of southern Africa in the late 1800s. Much of his work was done in partnership with his sister-in-law (Dorothy Bleek's aunt, Lucy Lloyd). The work of Dorothy Bleek was largely a continuation of her father and aunt's research, but she also made numerous notable contributions of her own to the field. Her culminating work, published after death, was the book ''A Bushman Dictionary'', still referenced today. Laurens van der Post, who liked to think of himself as "a white Bushman", credited her book ''Mantis and His Hunter'' (along with ''Specimens of Bushman Folklore'' by her father and a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Anthony Traill (linguist)
Professor Anthony Traill (1939–2007) was a linguist (specifically a phonetician), who was the world's foremost authority on a San (more broadly, a Khoisan) language called !Xóõ. He published widely on this language, including a dictionary of the language. !Xóõ is famous for having probably the largest consonant inventory of any language on the planet. For the most part, Traill's publications addressed the phonetics of !Xóõ in relation to related San languages. He also contributed importantly to the Khoisan and Bantu instrumental phonetic literature on tone with respect to voice and breathy voice. Traill was Professorial Research Fellow at Wits University for nearly the decade since he was Professor and Chair of Linguistics (until 1998), in the Department of Linguistics, at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. He spoke highly competent !Xóõ, having conducted research in the !Xóõ communities of Botswana on nearly 100 field trips over ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
