Khoisan Languages

Khoisan languages, a unique group of African languages spoken mainly in southern Africa, with two outlying languages found in eastern Africa. The term is a compound adapted from the words khoekhoe ‘person’ and saan ‘bush dweller’ in Nama, one of the Khoisan languages, and scholars have applied the words—either separately or conjoined—to refer to economic, social, physical, and linguistic features of certain aboriginal groups of southern and eastern Africa. Their most distinctive linguistic characteristic is the original and extensive use of click consonants, a feature which has spread through cultural and linguistic contact into a number of Bantu (Niger-Congo) languages—such as Xhosa, Zulu, and Sotho in South Africa and Gciriku (Diriku), Yei (Yeye), and Mbukushu in Botswana and Namibia—and into Dahalo, a Cushitic (Afro-Asiatic) language of Kenya. The linguistic use of clicks, whether original or borrowed, is restricted to these few African languages, with one exception: Damin. This ritual vocabulary of the Lardil of Australia contains some words with clicks together with other peculiar sounds, but the use of clicks is limited, and they have a symbolic value in addition to their linguistic function.