Open main menu
Home
Random
Recent changes
Special pages
Community portal
Preferences
About Wikipedia
Disclaimers
Incubator escapee wiki
Search
User menu
Talk
Dark mode
Contributions
Create account
Log in
Editing
Click consonant
(section)
Warning:
You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you
log in
or
create an account
, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.
Anti-spam check. Do
not
fill this in!
=== Southern Africa === Clicks occur in all three [[Khoisan languages|Khoisan language families]] of [[southern Africa]], where they may be the most numerous consonants. To a lesser extent they occur in three neighbouring groups of [[Bantu languages]]—which [[Sprachbund|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 languages|Tuu language]] (or languages) by the languages of the Nguni cluster (especially [[Zulu language|Zulu]], [[Xhosa language|Xhosa]] and [[Phuthi language|Phuthi]], but also to a lesser extent [[Swati language|Swazi]] and [[Southern Ndebele language|Ndebele]]), and spread from them in a reduced fashion to the Zulu-based [[pidgin]] [[Fanagalo]], [[Sesotho language|Sesotho]], [[Tsonga language|Tsonga]], [[Ronga language|Ronga]], the Mzimba dialect of [[Tumbuka language|Tumbuka]] and more recently to [[Ndau language|Ndau]] and urban varieties of [[Pedi language|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 the clicks from a [[Khoe languages|West Kalahari Khoe language]]; a separate development led to a smaller click inventory in the neighbouring [[Mbukushu language|Mbukushu]], [[Kwangali language|Kwangali]], [[Gciriku language|Gciriku]], [[Kuhane language|Kuhane]] and [[Fwe language|Fwe]] languages in [[Angola]], [[Namibia]], [[Botswana]] and [[Zambia]].<ref>Derek Nurse & Gérard Philippson (2003) ''The Bantu languages,'' pp 31–32</ref> 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 Creole|Oorlams]], retain clicks in [[Khoekhoe language|Khoekhoe]] words.
Edit summary
(Briefly describe your changes)
By publishing changes, you agree to the
Terms of Use
, and you irrevocably agree to release your contribution under the
CC BY-SA 4.0 License
and the
GFDL
. You agree that a hyperlink or URL is sufficient attribution under the Creative Commons license.
Cancel
Editing help
(opens in new window)