!Xóõ is a Khoisan language with 141 phonemes. These include many clicks. A question mark is a punctuation mark. ... This is a list of bodies that regulate languages. ... ISO 639 is one of several international standards that lists short codes for language names. ... SIL International is a non-profit, faith-based, scientific organization with the main purpose to study, develop and document lesser-known languages for the purpose of expanding linguistic knowledge, promoting world literacy and aiding minority language development. ... As with any complex, emergent concept, language is somewhat resistant to definition. ... Map showing the distribution of the Khoi-San languages. ... In spoken language, a phoneme is a basic, theoretical unit of sound that can distinguish words (i. ... Clicks are stops produced with two articulatory closures in the oral cavity. ...

It is spoken in Botswana and Namibia by anywhere from 3,200 to 4,200 people (year 1995). Its SIL code is NMN. The Republic of Botswana (Lefatshe la Botswana) is a landlocked nation of southern Africa. ... The Republic of Namibia is a country in southwest Africa, on the Atlantic coast. ... SIL International is a non-profit, faith-based, scientific organization with the main purpose to study, develop and document lesser-known languages for the purpose of expanding linguistic knowledge, promoting world literacy and aiding minority language development. ...

User Breakdown

Botswana: 3,000 to 4,000
Namibia: approx. 200

Relative

!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.

Phonemes

Clicks

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 postdental, 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, high-frequency bursts. Uvulars are consonants articulated with the back of the tongue against or near the uvula, that is, further back in the mouth than velar consonants. ... Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue (the dorsum) against the soft palate (the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum). ...

Vowels

There are 5 vowels, /a e i o u/, all of which can be nasalized. Only /a o u/ can be breathy voiced, pharyngealized, or strident voiced. Vowels can also be glottalized. There are 4 tones: high(á), mid(ā), low(à), and mid-falling(â).

Non-click consonants

Click consonants

Vowels can vary in a number of ways, including pharyngealization and strident voice. Strident and pharyngealized vowels are distinguished in !Xóõ, with the strident ones being both phonologically pharyngealized and breathy-voiced. !Xóõ is a tonal language and the ó in !Xóõ is high tone.

!Xóõ is a Subject Verb Object language. It is prepositional, and genitives, adjectives, relative clauses and even numbers come after the nouns to which they apply. Reduplication is used to form causatives. Much like most Indo-European languages, !Xóõ always puts the question word at the beginning of the sentence. In linguistic typology, subject-verb-object (SVO) is the sequence subject verb object in neutral expressions: Sam ate oranges. ... In grammar, a preposition is a word that establishes a relationship between an object (usually a noun phrase) and some other part of the sentence, often expressing a location in place or time. ... The genitive case is a grammatical case that indicates a relationship, primarily one of possession, between the noun in the genitive case and another noun. ... An adjective is a part of speech which modifies a noun, usually making its meaning more specific. ... Reduplication is a morphological process in which the root or stem of a word, or part of it, is repeated. ... A causative form, in linguistics, is an expression of an agent causing or forcing a patient to perform an action (or to be in a certain state). ... Proto-Indo-European Indo-European studies Indo-European is originally a linguistic term, referring to the Indo-European language family. ...

The linguist Anthony Traill has done extensive research into this language. Anthony Traill is a linguist who has studied !Xóõ. He wrote a dictionary of the language, A !Xóõ Dictionary, as well as a book on the phonetics of the language. ...

Dialects

Active

• Auni or /Auni or /Auo
• Kakia or Masarwa
• Ki/hazi
• Ng/u//en or Nu//en or /U//en or Ng/u/ei or /Nu//en or //U//en
• Nusan or Ng/usan or Nu-san or Noosan
• Xatia or Katia or Kattea or Khatia or Vaalpens or /Kusi or /Eikusi
• !Kwi

Extinct

• N/gamani
• /Nu//en
• /'Auni
• Ki/hazi

Other

• There is a dictionary of !Xóõ available, written by Anthony Traill.

External link

• Ethnologue Report for !Xóõ (http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=NMN)