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67-588: Although Kwadi is poorly attested, there is enough data to show that it is a divergent member of the Khoe family , or perhaps cognate with the Khoe languages in a Khoe–Kwadi family. It preserved elements of proto-Khoe that were lost in the western Khoe languages under the influence of Kxʼa languages in Botswana, and other elements that were lost in the eastern Khoe languages. The Kwadi people, called Kwepe ( Cuepe ) by

134-557: A "slapped" alveolar click, provisionally transcribed ⟨ ǃ¡ ⟩ (in turn, the lateral clicks in Sandawe are more abrupt and less noisy than in southern Africa). However, the Khoisan languages are poorly attested, and it is quite possible that, as they become better described, more click articulations will be found. Formerly when a click consonant was transcribed, two symbols were used, one for each articulation, and connected with

201-407: A click (lingual) articulation to a normal pulmonic consonant like [ ɢ ] (e.g. [ǀ͡ɢ] ); or linguo-glottalic and transition from lingual to an ejective consonant like [ qʼ ] (e.g. [ǀ͡qʼ] ): that is, a sequence of ingressive (lingual) release + egressive (pulmonic or glottalic) release. In some cases there is a shift in place of articulation as well, and instead of a uvular release,

268-521: A click close a syllable or end a word, but since the languages of the world that happen to have clicks consist mostly of CV syllables and allow at most only a limited set of consonants (such as a nasal or a glottal stop) to close a syllable or end a word, most consonants share the distribution of clicks in these languages. Most languages of the Khoesan families (Tuu, Kxʼa and Khoe) have four click types: { ǀ ǁ ǃ ǂ  } or variants thereof, though

335-552: A few dozen words. It is thought the latter may remain from an episode of language shift . The only non-African language known to have clicks as regular speech sounds is Damin , a ritual code once used by speakers of Lardil in Australia . In addition, one consonant in Damin is the egressive equivalent of a click, using the tongue to compress the air in the mouth for an outward (egressive) "spurt". Once clicks are borrowed into

402-796: A few have three or five, the last supplemented with either bilabial { ʘ  } or retroflex { 𝼊  }. Hadza and Sandawe in Tanzania have three, { ǀ ǁ ǃ  }. Yeyi is the only Bantu language with four, { ǀ ǁ ǃ ǂ  }, while Xhosa and Zulu have three, { ǀ ǁ ǃ  }, and most other Bantu languages with clicks have fewer. Like other consonants, clicks can be described using four parameters: place of articulation , manner of articulation , phonation (including glottalisation) and airstream mechanism . As noted above, clicks necessarily involve at least two closures, which in some cases operate partially independently: an anterior articulation traditionally represented by

469-608: A language as regular speech sounds, they may spread to native words, as has happened due to hlonipa word-taboo in the Nguni languages . In Gciriku , for example, the European loanword tomate (tomato) appears as cumáte with a click [ǀ] , though it begins with a t in all neighbouring languages. It has also been argued that click phonemes have been adopted into some languages through the process of hlonipha , women refraining from saying certain words and sounds that were similar to

536-751: A lesser extent Swazi and Ndebele ), and spread from them in a reduced fashion to the Zulu-based pidgin Fanagalo , Sesotho , Tsonga , Ronga , the Mzimba dialect of Tumbuka and more recently to Ndau and urban varieties of Pedi , where the spread of clicks continues. The second point of transfer was near the Caprivi Strip and the Okavango River where, apparently, the Yeyi language borrowed

603-471: A lot of friction. The next two families of clicks are more abrupt sounds that do not have this friction. Technically, these IPA letters transcribe only the forward articulation of the click, not the entire consonant. As the Handbook states, Since any click involves a velar or uvular closure [as well], it is possible to symbolize factors such as voicelessness, voicing or nasality of the click by combining

670-400: A syllabic nasal before its three clicks, as in nnqane 'the other side' (prenasalised nasal) and seqhenqha 'hunk'. There is ongoing discussion as to how the distinction between what were historically described as 'velar' and 'uvular' clicks is best described. The 'uvular' clicks are only found in some languages, and have an extended pronunciation that suggests that they are more complex than

737-415: A third place of articulation, glottal. A glottal stop is made during the hold of the click; the (necessarily voiceless) click is released, and then the glottal hold is released into the vowel. Glottalised clicks are very common, and they are generally nasalised as well. The nasalisation cannot be heard during the click release, as there is no pulmonic airflow, and generally not at all when the click occurs at

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804-595: A tie bar. This is because a click such as [ɢ͡ǀ] was analysed as a voiced uvular rear articulation [ɢ] pronounced simultaneously with the forward ingressive release [ǀ] . The symbols may be written in either order, depending on the analysis: ⟨ ɢ͡ǀ ⟩ or ⟨ ǀ͡ɢ ⟩. However, a tie bar was not often used in practice, and when the manner is tenuis (a simple [k] ), it was often omitted as well. That is, ⟨ ǂ ⟩ = ⟨ kǂ ⟩ = ⟨ ǂk ⟩ = ⟨ k͡ǂ ⟩ = ⟨ ǂ͡k ⟩. Regardless, elements that do not overlap with

871-544: A typical click, but the action is reversed and it is the rear velar or uvular closure that is released, drawing in air from the throat and nasal passages. Clicks occasionally turn up elsewhere, as in the special registers twins sometimes develop with each other. In West Africa , clicks have been reported allophonically, and similarly in French and German, faint clicks have been recorded in rapid speech where consonants such as /t/ and /k/ overlap between words. In Rwanda ,

938-407: A uvular rear closure, and the clicks explicitly described as uvular are in fact cases where the uvular closure is independently audible: contours of a click into a pulmonic or ejective component, in which the click has two release bursts, the forward (click-type) and then the rearward (uvular) component. "Velar" clicks in these languages have only a single release burst, that of the forward release, and

1005-450: A vowel, such as the dental "tsk-tsk" sound used to express disapproval, or the lateral tchick used with horses. In a number of languages ranging from the central Mediterranean to Iran, a bare dental click release accompanied by tipping the head upwards signifies "no". Libyan Arabic apparently has three such sounds. A voiceless nasal back-released velar click [ʞ] is used throughout Africa for backchanneling . This sound starts off as

1072-614: Is tʃi . Third person pronouns are simply the demonstratives, which are formed with a demonstrative base ha- followed by a gender/number suffix. The known possessive pronouns are tʃi 'my' and ha 'his'. From the Khoe languages, it's not expected that all pronouns have distinctive possessive forms. Kwadi nouns distinguished three genders (masculine, feminine, and common), as well as three numbers (singular, dual, and plural). Some nouns form their plural with suppletion . For example: tçe "woman" vs. tala kwaʼe "women". The attested paradigm of nominal suffixes for masculine and feminine nouns

1139-433: Is a great variety of click manners, both simplex and complex, the latter variously analysed as consonant clusters or contours . With so few click languages, and so little study of them, it is also unclear to what extent clicks in different languages are equivalent. For example, the [ǃkˀ] of Khoekhoe, [ǃkˀ ~ ŋˀǃk] of Sandawe and [ŋ̊ǃˀ ~ ŋǃkˀ] of Hadza may be essentially the same phone; no language distinguishes them, and

1206-629: Is a level of subjectivity involved in separating them. Counting each dialect cluster as a unit results in nine Khoe languages: Khoekhoe Eini Khoemana (Korana, Griqua) Shua Tsoa ? Tsʼixa Kxoe Naro ? ǂHaba (closest to Naro?) Gǁana Dozens of names are associated with the Tshu–Khwe languages, especially with the Eastern cluster. These may be place, clan or totem names, often without any linguistically identifiable data. Examples include Masasi, Badza, Didi, and Dzhiki . It

1273-645: Is also used for the accompaniment/efflux. There are seven or eight known places of articulation, not counting slapped or egressive clicks. These are (bi)labial affricated ʘ , or "bilabial"; laminal denti-alveolar affricated ǀ , or "dental"; apical (post)alveolar plosive ǃ , or "alveolar"; laminal palatal plosive ǂ , or "palatal"; laminal palatal affricated ǂᶴ (known only from Ekoka !Kung ); subapical postalveolar 𝼊 , or " retroflex " (only known from Central !Kung and possibly Damin); and apical (post)alveolar lateral ǁ , or "lateral". Languages illustrating each of these articulations are listed below. Given

1340-750: Is found across West Africa, the Caribbean and into the United States. The exact place of the alveolar clicks varies between languages. The lateral, for example, is alveolar in Khoekhoe but postalveolar or even palatal in Sandawe; the central is alveolar in Nǀuu but postalveolar in Juǀʼhoan. The terms for the click types were originally developed by Bleek in 1862. Since then there has been some conflicting variation. However, apart from "cerebral" (retroflex), which

1407-419: Is given below. This language-related article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Khoe languages The Khoe ( / ˈ k w eɪ / KWAY ) languages are the largest of the non- Bantu language families indigenous to Southern Africa. They were once considered to be a branch of a Khoisan language family, and were known as Central Khoisan in that scenario. Though Khoisan

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1474-488: Is incompatible with epiglottalisation. As do other consonants, clicks vary in phonation . Oral clicks are attested with four phonations: tenuis , aspirated , voiced and breathy voiced (murmured). Nasal clicks may also vary, with plain voiced, breathy voiced / murmured nasal, aspirated and unaspirated voiceless clicks attested (the last only in Taa). The aspirated nasal clicks are often said to have 'delayed aspiration'; there

1541-495: Is nasal airflow throughout the click, which may become voiced between vowels, though the aspiration itself is voiceless. A few languages also have pre-glottalised nasal clicks, which have very brief prenasalisation but have not been phonetically analysed to the extent that other types of clicks have. All languages have nasal clicks, and all but Dahalo and Damin also have oral clicks. All languages but Damin have at least one phonation contrast as well. Clicks may be pronounced with

1608-510: Is not presently possible to say which languages correspond to which names mentioned in the anthropological literature, though the majority will likely turn out to be Shua or Tshua. In most of the Eastern Kalahari Khoe languages, the alveolar and palatal clicks have been lost, or are in the process of being lost. For example, the northern dialect of Kua has lost palatal clicks, but the southern dialect retains them. In Tsʼixa ,

1675-476: Is now rejected as a family, the name is retained as a term of convenience. The most numerous and only well-known Khoi language is Khoikhoi (Nama/Damara) of Namibia . The rest of the family is found predominantly in the Kalahari Desert of Botswana . The languages are similar enough that a fair degree of communication is possible between Khoikhoi and the languages of Botswana. The Khoi languages were

1742-468: Is parentheses are doubtful: they are either found in only a single lexeme, or are plausible allophones of another consonant. Only dental clicks remain. Proto-Khoe–Kwadi *ǃ, *ǂ, *ǁ are replaced with non-click consonants such as /c, tɬ, c’, tɬ’, x’, ʔʲ/ . In disyllabic words, the second consonant is predominantly /m/, /n/, /l/, /d/, /b/, and it is possible those were the only consonants allowed within morphemes in native words, as would be typical for

1809-429: Is sometimes seen combined with diacritics for voicing (e.g. ⟨ ǂ̬ ⟩ for [ɡ͡ǂ] ), nasalization (e.g. ⟨ ǂ̃ ⟩ for [ŋ͡ǂ] ), etc. These differing transcription conventions may reflect differing theoretical analyses of the nature of click consonants, or attempts to address common misunderstandings of clicks. Clicks occur in all three Khoisan language families of southern Africa , where they may be

1876-492: Is tentatively reconstructed as having the seven oral vowels /a ɛ e i ɔ o u/ the three nasal vowels /ã ĩ ũ/ . Diphthongs seem to have been (/ai/), /ao/, /au/, /oa/, /oe/, /oɛ/, /ua/, /ui/ and /ãĩ/, /ũã/ . The status of /ao/ is not certain, and /oa/, /ua/ may have been allophones. The tone system is unclear, due to limited data and to the poor quality of recordings. At least two tones (high and low) are necessary to explain that data: The following consonants are attested. Those

1943-474: Is then released, producing what may be the loudest consonants in the language, although in some languages such as Hadza and Sandawe , clicks can be more subtle and may even be mistaken for ejectives . Click consonants occur at six principal places of articulation. The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) provides five letters for these places (there is as yet no dedicated symbol for the sixth). The above clicks sound like affricates , in that they involve

2010-527: Is written g! or dq , and /ᵏǃ͡χ/ !x or qg . In languages without /ᵏǃ͡χ/ , such as Zulu, /ᶢǃ/ may be written gq . There are a few less-well-attested articulations. A reported subapical retroflex articulation ⟨ 𝼊 ⟩ in Grootfontein !Kung turns out to be alveolar with lateral release, ⟨ ǃ𐞷 ⟩; Ekoka !Kung has a fricated alveolar click with an s-like release, provisionally transcribed ⟨ ǃ͡s ⟩; and Sandawe has

2077-465: The tut-tut (British spelling) or tsk! tsk! (American spelling) used to express disapproval or pity (IPA [ǀ] ), the tchick! used to spur on a horse (IPA [ǁ] ), and the clip-clop! sound children make with their tongue to imitate a horse trotting (IPA [ǃ] ). However, these paralinguistic sounds in English are not full click consonants, as they only involve the front of the tongue, without

Kwadi language - Misplaced Pages Continue

2144-656: The Khoe–Kwadi proto-language entered modern-day Botswana about 2000 years ago from the northeast (that is, from the direction of the modern Sandawe ), where they had likely acquired agriculture from the expanding Bantu , at a time when the Kalahari was more amenable to agriculture. The ancestors of the Kwadi (and perhaps the Damara ) continued west, whereas those who settled in the Kalahari absorbed speakers of Juu languages . Thus,

2211-757: The Kxʼa and Tuu (Northern and Southern Khoisan) languages. Taa , the last vibrant language in the latter family, has 45 to 115 click phonemes, depending on analysis (clusters vs. contours), and over 70% of words in the dictionary of this language begin with a click. Clicks appear more stop -like (sharp/abrupt) or affricate -like (noisy) depending on their place of articulation: In southern Africa, clicks involving an apical alveolar or laminal postalveolar closure are acoustically abrupt and sharp, like stops, whereas labial , dental and lateral clicks typically have longer and acoustically noisier click types that are superficially more like affricates. In East Africa, however,

2278-550: The Nǁng language and Juǀʼhoan , this is associated with a difference in the placement of the rear articulation: "grave" clicks are uvular , whereas "acute" clicks are pharyngeal .) Thus the alveolar click /ǃ/ sounds something like a cork pulled from a bottle (a low-pitch pop), at least in Xhosa; whereas the dental click /ǀ/ is like English tsk! tsk!, a high-pitched sucking on the incisors. The lateral clicks are pronounced by sucking on

2345-531: The release or influx), whereas the manner is ascribed to the posterior articulation (called the accompaniment or efflux). The anterior articulation defines the click type and is written with the IPA letter for the click (dental ⟨ ǀ ⟩, alveolar ⟨ ǃ ⟩, etc.), whereas the traditional term 'accompaniment' conflates the categories of manner (nasal, affricated), phonation (voiced, aspirated, breathy voiced, glottalised), as well as any change in

2412-687: The Bantu, appear to have been a remnant population of southwestern African hunter-gatherers , otherwise only represented by the Cimba , Kwisi , and the Damara , who adopted the Khoekhoe language . Like the Kwisi they were fishermen, on the lower reaches of the Coroca River . Kwadi was alternatively known by varieties of the words Koroka ( Ba-koroka, Curoca, Ma-koroko, Mu-coroca ) and Cuanhoca . Kwadi

2479-517: The Damara and Haiǁom took place in the 16th century and later, at about the time of European contact and colonization. The nearest relative of the Khoe family may be the extinct Kwadi language of Angola . This larger group, for which pronouns and some basic vocabulary have been reconstructed, is called Khoe–Kwadi . However, because Kwadi is poorly attested, it is difficult to tell which common words are cognate and which might be loans. Beyond that,

2546-510: The IPA have started to appear: ⟨ ǀ̥, ǀ̬, ǀ̃, ŋǀ̬ ⟩ for ⟨ ᵏǀ, ᶢǀ, ᵑǀ, ŋᶢǀ ⟩. In practical orthography, the voicing or nasalisation is sometimes given the anterior place of articulation: dc for ᶢǀ and mʘ for ᵑʘ , for example. In the literature on Damin, the clicks are transcribed by adding ⟨!⟩ to the homorganic nasal: ⟨m!, nh!, n!, rn!⟩ . Places of articulation are often called click types, releases, or influxes, though 'release'

2613-542: The Kalahari peoples from absorption by the agricultural Bantu when they spread south. Those Khoe who continued southwestwards retained pastoralism and became the Khoekhoe . They mixed extensively with speakers of Tuu languages , absorbing features of their languages. This has resulted in Tuu and Kx'a substrata in the Khoekhoe languages. The expansion of the Nama people into Namibia and their absorption of client peoples such as

2680-471: The Khoe family proper has a Juu influence. These immigrants were ancestral to the north-eastern Kalahari peoples (Eastern Tshu–Khwe branch linguistically), whereas Juu neighbours (or perhaps Kxʼa neighbours more generally) to the southwest who shifted to Khoe were ancestral to the Western Tshu–Khwe branch. Later desiccation of the Kalahari led to the adoption of a hunter-gatherer economy and preserved

2747-548: The airstream with the release of the posterior articulation (pulmonic, ejective), all of which are transcribed with additional letters or diacritics, as in the nasal alveolar click , ⟨ ǃŋ ⟩ or ⟨ ᵑǃ ⟩ or—to take an extreme example—the voiced (uvular) ejective alveolar click , ⟨ ᶢǃ͡qʼ ⟩. The size of click inventories ranges from as few as three (in Sesotho ) or four (in Dahalo ), to dozens in

Kwadi language - Misplaced Pages Continue

2814-593: The alveolar clicks tend to be flapped , whereas the lateral clicks tend to be more sharp. The five click places of articulation with dedicated symbols in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) are labial ʘ , dental ǀ , palatal ("palato-alveolar") ǂ , (post)alveolar ("retroflex") ǃ and lateral ǁ . In most languages, the alveolar and palatal types are abrupt; that is, they are sharp popping sounds with little frication (turbulent airflow). The labial, dental and lateral types, on

2881-444: The area. Kwadi has personal pronouns for first and second person in singular, dual, and plural numbers. Pronouns have subject, object, and possessive cases. 1st person plural may have distinguished clusivity . Object pronouns are suffixed with -le/-de , except for the first person dual object pronoun, which is just mu . Possessive pronouns are the same as the subject form, except for the first person singular possessive pronoun, which

2948-587: The beginning of an utterance, but it has the effect of nasalising preceding vowels, to the extent that the glottalised clicks of Sandawe and Hadza are often described as prenasalised when in medial position. Two languages, Gǀwi and Yeyi , contrast plain and nasal glottalised clicks, but in languages without such a contrast, the glottalised click is nasal. Miller (2011) analyses the glottalisation as phonation, and so considers these to be simple clicks. Various languages also have prenasalised clicks, which may be analysed as consonant sequences. Sotho , for example, allows

3015-725: The change has created doublets with palatal clicks vs palatal plosives. Click consonant U+01C0 ǀ LATIN LETTER DENTAL CLICK U+01C1 ǁ LATIN LETTER LATERAL CLICK U+01C2 ǂ LATIN LETTER ALVEOLAR CLICK U+01C3 ǃ LATIN LETTER RETROFLEX CLICK U+01DF0A 𝼊 LATIN LETTER RETROFLEX CLICK WITH RETROFLEX HOOK U+2016 ‖ DOUBLE VERTICAL LINE U+0021 ! EXCLAMATION MARK Click consonants , or clicks , are speech sounds that occur as consonants in many languages of Southern Africa and in three languages of East Africa . Examples familiar to English-speakers are

3082-438: The click symbol with the appropriate velar or uvular symbol: [k͡ǂ ɡ͡ǂ ŋ͡ǂ] , [q͡ǃ] . Thus technically [ǂ] is not a consonant, but only one part of the articulation of a consonant, and one may speak of "ǂ-clicks" to mean any of the various click consonants that share the [ǂ] place of articulation. In practice, however, the simple letter ⟨ ǂ ⟩ has long been used as an abbreviation for [k͡ǂ] , and in that role it

3149-803: The clicks from a West Kalahari Khoe language ; a separate development led to a smaller click inventory in the neighbouring Mbukushu , Kwangali , Gciriku , Kuhane and Fwe languages in Angola , Namibia , Botswana and Zambia . These sounds occur not only in borrowed vocabulary, but have spread to native Bantu words as well, in the case of Nguni at least partially due to a type of word taboo called hlonipha . Some creolised varieties of Afrikaans, such as Oorlams , retain clicks in Khoekhoe words. Three languages in East Africa use clicks: Sandawe and Hadza of Tanzania , and Dahalo , an endangered South Cushitic language of Kenya that has clicks in only

3216-511: The differences in transcription may have more to do with the approach of the linguist than with actual differences in the sounds. Such suspected allophones/allographs are listed on a common row in the table below. Some Khoisan languages are typologically unusual in allowing mixed voicing in non-click consonant clusters/contours, such as ̬d̥sʼk͡x , so it is not surprising that they would allow mixed voicing in clicks as well. This may be an effect of epiglottalised voiced consonants, because voicing

3283-457: The ejective release follows the click release, it is the rear closure of the click that is ejective, not an independently articulated consonant. That is, in a simple click, the release of the rear articulation is not audible, whereas in a contour click, the rear (uvular) articulation is audibly released after the front (click) articulation, resulting in a double release. These contour clicks may be linguo-pulmonic , that is, they may transition from

3350-484: The fact that the front and rear articulations are independent, and to use diacritics to indicate the rear articulation and the accompaniment. At first this tended to be ⟨ ᵏǀ, ᶢǀ, ᵑǀ ⟩ for ⟨ k͡ǀ, ɡ͡ǀ, ŋ͡ǀ ⟩, based on the belief that the rear articulation was velar; but as it has become clear that the rear articulation is often uvular or even pharyngeal even when there is no velar–uvular contrast, voicing and nasalisation diacritics more in keeping with

3417-450: The first Khoisan languages known to European colonists and are famous for their clicks , though these are not as extensive as in other Khoisan language families. There are two primary branches of the family, Khoikhoi of Namibia and South Africa , and Tshu–Khwe of Botswana and Zimbabwe . Except for Nama, they are under pressure from national or regional languages such as Tswana . Tom Güldemann believes agro-pastoralist people speaking

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3484-403: The forward release are usually written according to their temporal order: Prenasalisation is always written first (⟨ ɴɢ͡ǀ ⟩ = ⟨ ɴǀ͡ɢ ⟩ = ⟨ ɴǀ̬ ⟩), and the non-lingual part of a contour is always written second (⟨ k͡ǀʼqʼ ⟩ = ⟨ ǀ͡kʼqʼ ⟩ = ⟨ ǀ͡qʼ ⟩). However, it is common to analyse clicks as simplex segments, despite

3551-409: The molars of one or both sides. The labial click /ʘ/ is different from what many people associate with a kiss: the lips are pressed more-or-less flat together, as they are for a [p] or an [m] , not rounded as they are for a [w] . The most populous languages with clicks, Zulu and Xhosa, use the letters c, q, x, by themselves and in digraphs , to write click consonants. Most Khoisan languages, on

3618-475: The most numerous consonants. To a lesser extent they occur in three neighbouring groups of Bantu languages —which borrowed them , directly or indirectly, from Khoisan. In the southeast, in eastern South Africa , Eswatini , Lesotho , Zimbabwe and southern Mozambique , they were adopted from a Tuu language (or languages) by the languages of the Nguni cluster (especially Zulu , Xhosa and Phuthi , but also to

3685-503: The name of their husband, sometimes replacing local sounds by borrowing clicks from a nearby language. Scattered clicks are found in ideophones and mimesis in other languages, such as Kongo /ᵑǃ/ , Mijikenda /ᵑǀ/ and Hadza /ᵑʘʷ/ (Hadza does not otherwise have labial clicks). Ideophones often use phonemic distinctions not found in normal vocabulary. English and many other languages may use bare click releases in interjections , without an accompanying rear release or transition into

3752-555: The nearest relative may be the Sandawe isolate; the Sandawe pronoun system is very similar to that of Khoe–Kwadi, but there are not enough known correlations for regular sound correspondences to be worked out. However, the relationship has some predictive value, for example if the back-vowel constraint , which operates in the Khoe languages but not in Sandawe, is taken into account. Language classifications may list one or two dozen Khoe languages. Because many are dialect clusters , there

3819-546: The nursery rhyme is, where the /ŋ/ onsets are all pronounced [ᵑǃ¡] . Occasionally other languages are claimed to have click sounds in general vocabulary. This is usually a misnomer for ejective consonants , which are found across much of the world. For the most part, the Southern African Khoisan languages only use root -initial clicks. Hadza, Sandawe and several Bantu languages also allow syllable -initial clicks within roots. In no language does

3886-593: The other hand (with the notable exceptions of Naro and Sandawe ), use a more iconic system based on the pipe ⟨|⟩ . (The exclamation point for the "retroflex" click was originally a pipe with a subscript dot, along the lines of ṭ, ḍ, ṇ used to transcribe the retroflex consonants of India.) There are also two main conventions for the second letter of the digraph as well: voicing may be written with g and uvular affrication with x , or voicing with d and affrication with g (a convention of Afrikaans). In two orthographies of Juǀʼhoan, for example, voiced /ᶢǃ/

3953-521: The other hand, are typically noisy: they are longer, lip- or tooth-sucking sounds with turbulent airflow, and are sometimes called affricates. (This applies to the forward articulation; both may also have either an affricate or non-affricate rear articulation as well.) The apical places, ǃ and ǁ , are sometimes called "grave", because their pitch is dominated by low frequencies; whereas the laminal places, ǀ and ǂ , are sometimes called "acute", because they are dominated by high frequencies. (At least in

4020-500: The places of articulation, the terms listed under Vosser (2013) in the table above have become standard, apart from such details as whether in a particular language ǃ and ǁ are alveolar or postalveolar, or whether the rear articulation is velar, uvular or pharyngeal, which again varies between languages (or may even be contrastive within a language). Click manners are often called click accompaniments or effluxes , but both terms have met with objections on theoretical grounds. There

4087-624: The poor state of documentation of Khoisan languages, it is quite possible that additional places of articulation will turn up. No language is known to contrast more than five. Extra-linguistically, Coatlán Zapotec of Mexico uses a linguolabial click, [ǀ̼ʔ] , as mimesis for a pig drinking water, and several languages, such as Wolof , use a velar click [ʞ] , long judged to be physically impossible, for backchanneling and to express approval. An extended dental click with lip pursing or compression (" sucking-teeth "), variable in sound and sometimes described as intermediate between [ǀ] and [ʘ] ,

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4154-424: The release of the back of the tongue that is required for clicks to combine with vowels and form syllables. Anatomically, clicks are obstruents articulated with two closures (points of contact) in the mouth, one forward and one at the back. The enclosed pocket of air is rarefied by a sucking action of the tongue (in technical terminology, clicks have a lingual ingressive airstream mechanism ). The forward closure

4221-400: The release of the rear articulation isn't audible. However, in other languages all clicks are velar, and a few languages, such as Taa , have a true velar–uvular distinction that depends on the place rather than the timing of rear articulation and that is audible in the quality of the vowel. Regardless, in most of the literature the stated place of the click is the anterior articulation (called

4288-639: The sequence /mŋ/ may be pronounced either with an epenthetic vowel, [mᵊ̃ŋ] , or with a light bilabial click, [m𐞵̃ŋ] —often by the same speaker. Speakers of Gan Chinese from Ningdu county, as well as speakers of Mandarin from Beijing and Jilin and presumably people from other parts of the country, produce flapped nasal clicks in nursery rhymes with varying degrees of competence, in the words for 'goose' and 'duck', both of which begin with /ŋ/ in Gan and until recently began with /ŋ/ in Mandarin as well. In Gan,

4355-590: The simple ('velar') clicks, which are found in all. Nakagawa (1996) describes the extended clicks in Gǀwi as consonant clusters , sequences equivalent to English st or pl , whereas Miller (2011) analyses similar sounds in several languages as click–non-click contours , where a click transitions into a pulmonic or ejective articulation within a single segment, analogous to how English ch and j transition from occlusive to fricative but still behave as unitary sounds. With ejective clicks, for example, Miller finds that although

4422-469: The special click symbol in the IPA—and a posterior articulation traditionally transcribed for convenience as oral or nasal , voiced or voiceless, though such features actually apply to the entire consonant. The literature also describes a contrast between velar and uvular rear articulations for some languages. In some languages that have been reported to make this distinction, such as Nǁng , all clicks have

4489-506: Was found to be an inaccurate label when true retroflex clicks were discovered, Bleek's terms are still considered normative today. Here are the terms used in some of the main references. The dental, lateral and bilabial clicks are rarely confused, but the palatal and alveolar clicks frequently have conflicting names in older literature, and non-standard terminology is fossilized in Unicode. However, since Ladefoged & Traill (1984) clarified

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