Khoisan languages - Khoisan languages The Khoisan languages are the smallest phylum of African Languages. Historically, they were spoken by the Khoi and San people. Today they are only spoken in the Kalahari Desert in south-western Africa. They are notable for the use of click consonants as phonemes, including the !Xu~ language, which has in excess of 50 click consonants and over 140 separate phonemes. Many Americans were exposed to this group of languages through the San language used in the 1984 film The Gods Must Be Crazy. The only other languages using clicks as phonemes are Nguni Bantu languages, such as Xhosa and Zulu in South Africa, Sesotho (also spoken in South Africa, and Lesotho), and the Hadza and Sandawe languages in Kenya. See also: Namibia, Botswana, South.
Khoisan - Khoisan Khoisan is the name for several ethnic groups, that share some specific physical and linguistic characteristics. They seem to have a very long history in the region, where they used to live until recently. They seem to have appeared in the southern parts of Africa many ten thousands of years ago. In modern times they lived in South Africa, Namibia and Botswana, and were partly exterminated by the Dutch and English settlers in that area. They show the largest genetical diversity in MtDNA of all human population, which indicates, that they are one of the oldest human communities, that never migrated to an other area. Physicly the differ a lot from what one is used to regard as "Black people". Some scientists regard them as.
Language families and languages - Language families and languages Most languages are known to belong to language families (called simply "families" for the rest of this article). An accurately identified family is a phylogenetic unit, i.e., all its members derive from a common ancestor. The ancestor is very seldom known to us directly, since most languages have a very short recorded history. However, it is possible to recover many of the features of the common ancestor of related languages by applying comparative method -- a reconstructive procedure worked out by 19th-century linguists. It can demonstrate the family status of many of the groupings listed below. Language families can be subdivided into smaller units, conventionally referred to as "branches" (because the history of a language family is often represented as a "tree" diagram). The.
List of languages - List of languages This list of languages is alphabetical by English name. For a more structured list, see Language families and languages, ISO 639 or List of languages by total speakers. Ethnologue lists about 6,800 main languages in its language name index (see the external link) and distinguishs about 41,000 alternate language names and dialects. This is a list of natural and constructed languages spoken by humans. See also a list of programming languages. A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z A Afrikaans Ainu Albanian Aleut Algonquin Amhara Amharic Anglo-Saxon Apache A-Pucikwar Arabic / عربية (Semitic) Aragonese Aramaic Arawak Armenian Assamese Assyrian Asturian Avestan Azerbaijani B Balochi Bambara.
Khoikhoi - The Khoikhoi ('men of men') or Khoi are a division of the Khoisan ethnic group of South-West Africa, closely related to the San or Bushmen. They have lived in this area for about 30,000 years. They were once known to Europeans as the Hottentots, a name that is now considered derogatory (it means "stutterer" in Dutch, describing the clicking sounds used in the Khoisan languages). The word lives on, however, in the names of several African animal and plant species, such as the Hottentot fig, Carpobrotus edulis. See also: Khoikhoi mythology..
ISO 639 - are two items for ISO 639: ISO 639-1:2002 Codes for the representation of names of languages -- Part 1: Alpha-2 code ISO 639-2:1998 Codes for the representation of names of languages -- Part 2: Alpha-3 code In other words, there are two-letter codes and three-letter codes. 22 of the languages have two three-letter codes. In these cases, the first code is bibliographic (ISO 639-1/B), and the second code is for terminological use (ISO 639-2/T). See also: language families and languages, list of languages, list of official languages The following list is sorted by language name in the third column. A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z A abk ab Abkhazian ace Achinese.
History of Africa - so could not really be the origin of the name. Others have suggested it is from a name Afer, related to the modern name Berber. Egypt was considered part of Asia by the ancients, and first assigned to Africa by the geographer Ptolemy, who made the isthmus of Suez and the Red Sea the boundary between Asia and Africa. As Europeans came to understand the real extent of the continent, the idea of Africa expanded with their knowledge. Prehistory For the evolution of hominids, which occurred in East and Central Africa, and particularly of Homo sapiens, see under paleontology and other entries. The earliest human migration out of Africa and within the continent are indicated by linguistic and cultural evidence, and increasingly by computer-analyzed genetic evidence (see Cavalli-Sforza). The Khoisan languages.
Ga-gorib - was chased around the hole until he slipped and fell inside. He eventually escaped and pushed Ga-gorib into the pit. Gorib is 'the spotted one' (meaning leopard, cheetah, or leguaan) in Central Khoisan languages, so the Ga-gorib probably has some connection with this formidable species. The element ga- remains to be explained, possibly it is a negative: 'Not-a-leopard', not only on comparative morphological grounds, but also because its adversary himself has many symbolic connotations of the leopard (rain, stars, speckledness) External Link [1].
Ejective consonant - consonants. Language families which utilise ejective consonants include the Northwest, Northeast and South Caucasian families; the Athabaskan family; the Salishan family; the Afro-Asiatic family (notably Hausa); the Khoisan family; and Korean. The vast majority of ejective consonants noted in the world's languages are plosives or affricates. However, a very few languages utilise ejective fricatives as well; Ubykh (Northwest Caucasian) uses an ejective lateral fricative, the Upper Necaxa dialect of the Totonac language uses an ejective labiodental fricative, and Kabardian uses both of these in addition to ejective alveolopalatal and postalveolar fricatives..
Demographics of Chad - Chad Table of contents showTocToggle("show","hide") 1 Languages and ethnic groups 2 Religions 3 Miscellaneous Languages and ethnic groups The people of Chad speak more than 100 different languages and divide themselves into many ethnic groups. It is important to note, however, that language and ethnicity are not the same. Moreover, neither element can be tied to a particular physical type. The commonly held image that Africa is populated by discrete ethnic groups (or "tribes") who live isolated from each other, guarding their languages and customs jealously and intermarrying only with each other, is a stereotype that hinders understanding of the dynamics of African societies. In Chad, European conquest and administration intensified feelings of ethnic separateness by drawing local boundaries along perceived ethnic lines. The Europeans also appointed chiefs and other local.
Demographics of Tanzania - more than 1 million members. The majority of Tanzanians, including such large tribes as the Sukuma and the Nyamwezi, are of Bantu stock. Groups of Nilotic or related origin include the nomadic Masai and the Luo, both of which are found in greater numbers in neighboring Kenya. Two small groups speak languages of the Khoisan family peculiar to the Bushman and Hottentot peoples. Cushitic-speaking peoples, originally from the Ethiopian highlands, reside in a few areas of Tanzania. Although much of Zanzibar's African population came from the mainland, one group known as Shirazis traces its origins to the island's early Persian settlers. Non-Africans residing on the mainland and Zanzibar account for 1% of the total population. The Asian community, including Hindus, Sikhs, Shi'a and Sunni Muslims, and Goans, has declined by 50%.
!Xu language - language, or !Kung as it is often spelled in English, is a member of the Khoisan languages, spoken through southern Africa. !Xu is spoken particularly in a region that encompasses parts of Namibia and Botswana, and belongs to what is called the Northern group of Khoisan languages; it possesses no labial click, typical of the Southern Khoisan languages.. Linguistically, !Xu is generally termed isolating; what this means is that words' meanings are changed by the addition of other, separate words, rather than by the addition of affixes or the changing of word structure. A few suffixes exist - for example, distributive plurals are formed with the noun suffix -si or -mhi, but in the main meaning is given only by series of words rather than by grouping of affixes. !Xu distinguishes.
African language - African language The African languages are currently divided into the following four language families Afro-Asiatic languages (Semitic, etc.) Niger-Congo languages (Bantu, etc.) Nilo-Saharan languages Khoisan languages see also: Polyglotta Africana, Joseph H. Greenberg The above are families indigenous to Africa. Two African languages belong to non-African families: Malagasy is an Austronesian language, and Afrikaans is Indo-European. More on African languages and language families : http://www.ethnologue.com/country_index.asp?place=Africa Studying African Languages In Europe there is a project going on building up a common curriculum in African Languages and Linguistics called EEQUALL (European Equivalences In African Languages And Linguistics). It will allow students to get credit points from different universities. http://www.eequall.info (currently a bit outdated).
Bar (diacritic) - stroke, barred lambda : a letter from the International Phonetic Alphabet. ɵ (lowercase)/Ɵ (uppercase) : Latin letter o with middle tilde, barred o : a letter used in some African alphabets. This may also be a tilde diacritic instead. ƶ (lowercase only?) : Latin small letter z with stroke, barred z: a letter used for some Pan-Turkish languages. ǂ : Latin letter alvolear click : used for the Khoisan language. ғ (lowercase only?) : Cyrillic small letter ghe with stroke, barred ghe : used in Azerbaijani and some other Balkan languages. ө (lowercase)/Ө (uppercase) : Cyrillic letter barred o ӫ (lowercase)/Ӫ (uppercase) : Cyrillic letter barred o with diaeresis ᴃ : Latin small capital letter barred B ᴯ : Modifier letter barred B ¹: Displays fine in Opera 7.5 and K-Meleon.
Click consonant - Clicks are inherently stop-like or affricate-like depending on their place of articulation: clicks involving an alveolar or palatal closure are acoustically like plain stops, while bilabial, dental and lateral ones sound more like affricates. Clicks are in all the Khoisan languages of southern Africa and in the neighbouring Nguni languages (Zulu, Xhosa, etc.) of the Bantu family, which borrowed them from Khoisan (there are some 80 languages in both groups). Clicks also occur in Sandawe and Hadza, two languages (or rather language groups, once believed to be branches of Khoisan) in Tanzania, Sesotho, spoken in South Africa and Lesotho, and in Dahalo, a South Cushitic language spoken in Kenya. The only non-African language known to employ clicks as regular speech sounds are Damin, an "alternative code" used by speakers of Lardil.
Xoo - Xoo !Xóõ is a Khoisan language with 141 phonemes. These include many clicks. It is spoken in Botswana and Namibia by about 4,000 people. !Xóõ belongs to the Southern African branch of the Khoisan language phylum. It is categorized in the Southern subbranch of the Southern African Khoisan languages. Its closest relative is =/Hua. There are about 80 clicks in it, with 5 basic clicks and 17 or so accompaniments, including the rare uvular closure as opposed to the velar closure of most clicks. The five basic clicks are the bilabial, the dental, the alveolar, the palatal, and the lateral click. Clicks fall into two main classes depending on the sound made by the burst when they are articulated: clicks with abrupt, short bursts and those with long,.
Tonal language - meaning. Perhaps the best-known examples are Mandarin Chinese and Cantonese, but in fact, many unrelated languages are tonal. Some language groups that contain tonal languages include Sino-Tibetan (to which the Chinese languages belong), Austro-Asiatic (which include Thai and Vietnamese), the Indo-Aryan (which includes Punjabi), the Bantu languages (most languages in Sub-Saharan Africa are Bantu) and the Khoisan languages. Many other languages use tone to convey grammatical structure or emphasis (see phonology), but this does not make them tonal languages in this sense. To illustrate how tone can affect meaning, let us look at the following example from Mandarin Chinese, which has five tones: 1 is a long, high level tone. 2 starts at normal pitch and rises to the pitch of tone 1. 3 is a low tone, dipping down briefly.
San - Storage Area Network in computing. San is the fictional girl raised by a wolf goddess in Miyazaki Hayao's animated movie Princess Mononoke - the movie's title is a name by which she is also known. The San peoples of South Africa and neighbouring Botswana, who live in the Kalahari, are part of the Khoisan group and are related to the Khoi. However, they have no collective name for themselves in any of their languages. They strongly object to being called San, a term applied to them by their ethnic relatives and historic rivals the Khoi; the term carries the same baggage in Southern Africa that the word Nigger carries in the United States. They prefer to be called Bushmen, despite the fact that the term is considered politically incorrect by most.
South Africa - the borders of South Africa. Afrika borwa Republiek van Suid-Afrika Republic of South Africa () (In Detail) (Full size) National motto: !ke e: /xarra //ke (Khoisan of the /Xam: diverse people unite) [1] Official languages Afrikaans, English, Zulu, Xhosa, Swazi, Ndebele, Southern Sotho, Northern Sotho, Tsonga, Tswana and Venda Capitals Cape Town (legislative) Pretoria (administrative) Bloemfontein (judicial) Largest City Cape Town (1991 census) President Thabo Mbeki Area - Total - % water Ranked 24th 1,219,912 km² Negligible Population - Total (2002) - Density Ranked 26th 43,647,658 36/km² Independence -Date1 From the UK: May 31, 1910 Currency Rand Time zone UTC +2 National anthems Nkosi Sikelel iAfrica (God Bless Africa) Die Stem van Suid Afrika (The Call of South Africa) Internet TLD .ZA Calling Code 27 (1) Formed as Union of South Africa..
Phoneme - language and the alphabet used, a phoneme may be written consistently with one letter; however, there are many exceptions to this rule (especially in English). English has 40 phonemes, which is above average across all languages. Polynesian has 11, Khoisan has 140. When representing phonemes in linguistic writing, it is common to use 'slash' markers as quotes around the symbol that stands for the sound. For example, the phoneme for the initial consonant sound in the word "phoneme" would be written as /f/. In other words, the English grapheme is , but this digraph represents one sound /f/. Allophones, real speech variants of a phoneme, are often denoted in linguistics by the use of diacritical or other marks added to the phoneme symbols and then placed in square brackets [ ].
