{"id":871,"date":"2021-05-03T09:28:30","date_gmt":"2021-05-03T07:28:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/botswanasending.co.za\/?p=871"},"modified":"2021-05-03T09:28:31","modified_gmt":"2021-05-03T07:28:31","slug":"the-uniqueness-of-the-khoesan-langauges","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/botswanasending.co.za\/?p=871","title":{"rendered":"The uniqueness of the Khoesan langauges"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Brief historical background<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In my preparation\nof catechism material in Naro, one is again impressed by how unique and\ndescriptive the language can be. Naro is a “Kh\u00f3\u00e8 language” and not a\n“San language”. It is pronounced “khw\u00ea”. \u201cKh\u00f3\u00e8\u201d means \u201chuman\u201d. It can also be\nwritten as \u201ckhoi\u201d. When we speak of the “Kh\u00f3\u00e8-kh\u00f3\u00e8”, we mean\n“man-man”. The word \u201cKhoesan\u201d is then a word that gather the \u201cKh\u00f3\u00e8\npeople\u201d and the \u201cSan people\u201d under one umbrella, referring to the common\nsucking sounds or click sounds in their languages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The “Kh\u00f3\u00e8\npeople” are those with whom Jan van Riebeeck had dealt with in the Cape,\nbut also the “San people”. The “Kh\u00f3\u00e8 people” were largely\ncattle farmers, but they also hunted, while the “San people” were\nmainly hunters who roamed all over Southern Africa and lived on veld food and\nhunting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was as Jan van\nRiebeeck and the early inhabitants of the Cape knew them. Both of these\nlanguage families use “clicking sounds” or “sucking sounds”\nto communicate. The Xhosa and Zulu borrowed their clicking sounds from the\nKhoesan people, just as many borrow words of Afrikaans and English crept into\ntheir language. Originally, Zulu and Xhosa, like all other Bantu languages, had\nno sucking or clicking sounds in their language.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Intermarriage, when\nthe Nguni people arrived from the North in Southern Africa, brought the sucking\nsounds into their languages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My Zulu lecturer in\nPotchefstroom explained to me that when the Khoesan people stole cattle from\nthe Xhosas or Zulus in the past for food, they were pursued and literally\nhunted. Where the Xhosas or the Zulus then came upon their wives and children,\nthey were captured. This is how intermarriage took place and the clickiing sounds\nentered the Zulu and Xhosa languages, because the Khoesan women could not speak\nor understand Zulu or Xhosa. Old missionary dictionaries confirm this. Except\nof course for Xhosa and Zulu, Southern Sotho and Tsonga have only one sucking\nsound in their languages. The further one has moved east from the Cape Colony,\nthe less impact the clicking sounds had on the African languages, which tells\none that the Khoesan languages were more prevalent in the Cape Colony at that\ntime. If you listen to Xhosa and Zulu, you occasionally hear a clicking sound\n(sucking sound) in their languages, while you can hardly make a sentence in the\nKhoesan languages without sucking sounds. Xhosa, which was the closest to the\nKhoesan languages, therefore has more sucking sounds in its language than Zulu\nwhich was further away, but it is only a drop in the ocean compared to the clicking\nsounds in the Khoesan languages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A language like !X\u00f3\u00f5\nfrom Bere, 80% of all its words consist of clicking sounds. Only 20% of words\ndo not have clicking sounds. Another interesting thing is, only 1% of all the\nlanguages \u200b\u200bin the world (over 6000) use clicking sounds, and the 1% are only\nin southern Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Khoesan languages themselves<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

All\nthe Kh\u00f3\u00e8 people (Kh\u00f3\u00e8) are relatives of the old Hottentots in the Cape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Their\nlanguages \u200b\u200bdiffer from each other as the Germanic languages \u200b\u200bdiffer from each\nother such as, German, Afrikaans, Dutch, Belgian and English, or as the Roman\nlanguages \u200b\u200bdiffer from each other such as, French, Spanish, Portuguese and\nItalian. They descended from the same original language and later broke up into\ndifferent related languages. Similarly, the African languages \u200b\u200bare related and\nuse the same grammatical principles, but centuries or thousands of years ago\nthere must have been an ancient language that scientists call Urbantu. From\nthis original language arose languages \u200b\u200bthat are spoken everywhere in Africa\ntoday, even though they do not understand each other, just as a German cannot\nunderstand Afrikaans and vice versa, it is clear that there was a common\norigin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As\nan example, meat is called “fleisch” in German and the English have\n“flesh” in their language. Almost every African language in Africa\ncalls meat \u201cnama\u201d or \u201cinyama\u201d or \u201conyama\u201d. There are words that again radically\ndiffer from each other, but they all share more or less the same grammatical\nprinciples. Thus a Zulu cannot understand Venda at all and a Venda cannot\nunderstand Shona or Herero at all and vice versa, yet they share the same\ngrammatical principles. Among the Kh\u00f2\u00e9 lanuages you will find Nama, !Ora,\n\/\/ani, Buga, \/Gana, Naro, \/\/Ghana, \/Gui, #Haba, Shua, Deti, Cara, Cirecire, \/Haise,\nDanisi (or Danasani), Tshoa, Cua, Ciri-Cire and Kua. These are all languages\n\u200b\u200band not dialects of each other. If we wanted to call it dialects, then we\nmust call Afrikaans a dialect of English or German. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nSan languages in turn differ from the Kh\u00f3\u00e8 languages like Greek from\nAfrikaans. The difference is actually even greater because there are many\nsimilarities between Afrikaans and Greek, but there are very few similarities\nbetween the Khoe and the San languages apart from the clicking sounds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although\nall these languages \u200b\u200buse sucking sounds or clicking sounds, they differ\nradically from each other. These sucking sounds are actually just consonants\nlike r, p, s, t and so on that are added to the normal alphabet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

English\nand Russian also share many alphabet letters, but that does not mean they can\nunderstand each other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Under\nthe San languages you then find the northern San languages and the southern San\nlanguages. They again differ from each other like English from French. The\nnorthern San groups are the #Hua and the Ju grouping. The Ju group consists of\nJu\/\u2019hoan, !Xun and Kg\u2019au\/\/ei. The Ju\/\u2019hoan is the language spoken in “The\ngods must be crazy” (the film by Jamie Uys). The Southern groups are the\nTaa and the !Kui grouping. The Taa grouping includes the !X\u00f3\u00f5 of Bere. The !Kui\ngrouping includes the \/Xam, \/\/Xegui Tshasi and the #Khomani grouping.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unfortunately,\nthe \/Xam language became extinct in 1915. The #Khomani is on the verge of\nextinction. If I am correct, there is only one native speaker left. This is the\nlast San language in South Africa. Note in South Africa and not southern\nAfrica. In southern Africa there are still many San speakers who have some San\nlanguage as their mother tongue. If we talk about the last San language, we are\ntalking about the previous dispensation, because a number of years ago a San-\nand Khoe group came to settle in South Africa who came from the Northern parts\nof Namibia, who did military service for the former South African army. They\nwere settled here by the previous South African government because their lives\nwere no longer safe where they were. In southern Africa there are still many\nSan language speakers who have some or other San language as their mother\ntongue. Later more about the San languages and specifically the !X\u00f3\u00f5 (Qg\u00f5o)\nthey speak at Bere and further south.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In\nD\u2019kar, surrounding farms and actually in the entire Gantsi district, the medium\nof instruction among the Bushmen is mostly Naro. The Ju\/\u2019hoan and the !X\u00f3\u00f5\nspeakers will speak Naro when they come in contact with the Naros. If they can\nnot speak Naro, they talk to each other Tswana. Ju\/\u2019hoan and !X\u00f3\u00f5 are both San\nlanguages, while Naro is a Kh\u00f3\u00e8 language.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many\nNaros can speak Ju\/\u2019hoan, but very rarely do you hear a Naro talking !X\u00f3\u00f5. I\nonly came across two people who could speak both. One of our church council\nmembers, Xgaiga, who is fluent in Naro and Ju\/\u2019hoan, tells me about his\nexperience once in a bus on the way to Gaborone. He is very jovial and\ntalkative and loves making conversation. He happened to sit from Bere between a\ngroup !X\u00f3\u00f5 speaking bushman, all the way to Gaborone. Sitting between them, he\ncouldn\u2019t understand a single word they said. If it was the Ju\/\u2019hoan language\n(the Bushman language of “the gods must be crazy”), he could have had\na part in their conversations, but because !X\u00f3\u00f5 differs so radically from the Ju\/\u2019hoan\nlangauge he could not understand anything, even though they are both San\nlanguages. It was for him one of his most boring moments he ever experienced.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Naro\nlike most of the Kh\u00f3\u00e8 languages has 28 click sound combinations, Ju\/\u2019hoan has\n48 and 10 vowels, and !X\u00f3\u00f5 83 and 31 vowels according to the researchers of\nWikipedia. Together with the click sounds (sucking sounds), the !X\u00f3\u00f5 language\nhas 164 consonants making it the language with the most consonants in the\nworld. Although the Ju\/\u2019hoan has more clicking sounds than Naro, many people\nincluding the Naros consider Ju\/\u2019hoan a very easy language. The word order is\nin many cases the same as English or Afrikaans. What makes Naro so difficult\naccording to many is the word order. A\nsimple example: \u201cNc\u00e3ar tc\u2019\u1ebde a m\u00e1\u00e1 nc\u00e3a tsi xg\u2019ae cgoa\nme ta tc\u2019\u1ebdea.\u201d It literally means: Did I think and say did you meet with\nhim thought. Which means: I thought you met him. The underlined is the click sounds\nin the sentence.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Something\nelse from the Kh\u00f3\u00e8 languages that makes it very rich compared to the San\nlanguages. The Kh\u00f3\u00e8 languages and then now specifically Naro see everything in\nterms of masculine, feminine and neutral. One thing can be a man, a woman or a\nthing. In the San languages, all pronouns are basically indicated as masculine.\nIn other words, when you talk about a woman, you would say, “he walked”\nor “he did this or that” in the San lanuages, but not in the Kh\u00f3\u00e8\nlanguages. It’s like the Bantu languages, he and she is the same word. There is\nno distinction regarding the pronoun, while in Naro one has to describe in\ndetail who it is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Examples:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022\nThere are two words for you:<\/p>\n\n\n\n