!Kung or !’O!Kung is a group of northern dialects of the Ju dialect continuum, which is generally classified as part of the Khoisan language family. !Kung is spoken in northern Namibia and southern Angola by perhaps 15,000 Saan, though this number is uncertain due to the possibility of double counting populations that go by more than one name. The Okavango River is a river in southwest Africa. ... Current distribution of Human Language Families Most languages are known to belong to language families. ... Map showing the distribution of the Khoi-San languages. ... This is a list of Khoisan languages, which are indigenous to southern Africa. ... ISO 639-1 is the first part of the ISO 639 international-standard language-code family. ... ISO 639 is one of several international standards that lists short codes for language names. ... ISO 639-3 is in process of development as an international standard for language codes. ... The International Phonetic Alphabet. ... Phonetics (from the Greek word φωνή, phone = sound/voice) is the study of sounds (voice). ... Unicode is an industry standard whose goal is to provide the means by which text of all forms and languages can be encoded for use by computers. ... The Ju or Zhu languages, actually a dialect continuum, form a branch of the hypothetical Khoisan language family. ... A dialect continuum is a range of dialects spoken across a large geographical area, differing only slightly between areas that are geographically close, and gradually decreasing in mutual intelligibility as the distances become greater. ... Map showing the distribution of the Khoi-San languages. ... The Bushmen or San peoples of South Africa and neighbouring Botswana and Namibia, who live in the Kalahari, are part of the Khoisan group and are related to the Khoikhoi. ...

Alternate names

(!’O)!Kung is also spelled Qxü, !Xû(n), !Ku, !Hu, !Khung, !Xung, !O!ung, and regionally called Maligo or !Xu-Angola, !Kung-Ekoka, ’Akhoe, and Vasekela.

Geographic distribution

!Kung is spoken in Namibia and Angola, generally around the Okavango River and Ovamboland Territory. The Okavango River is a river in southwest Africa. ...

Current status

!Kung is endangered, along with most other Khoisan languages, because of encroaching Bantu and Khoi cultures. The Herero and Nama languages are becoming more commonly spoken among the Kung-ekoka, and the hunter-gatherer way of life that is typical of the Khoisan-speaking peoples is being eroded by Bantu and Khoi farming settlements. Map showing the approximate distribution of Bantu (dull yellow) vs. ... The Khoikhoi (men of men) or Khoi are a division of the Khoisan ethnic group of south-western Africa, closely related to the Bushmen (San). ... The Herero are a people belonging to the Bantu group of about 120. ... Nama is a Khoisan language spoken in Namibia, Botswana, and South Africa. ...

Sounds

!Kung is famous for having one of the largest sound inventories in the world. However, the exact number depends on the analysis used to count them. For the complete sound inventory of a related Ju dialect, see Ju/’hoan. Ju|’hoan (also called Zu|’hõasi, Dzu’oasi, Zû-|hoa) is a Khoisan language spoken in the Northwest District of Botswana by about 5,000 people (2002) and by perhaps a comparable number across the border in Namibia. ...

Phonemic contrasts in !Kung include:

• Pulmonic - click - twa to finish vs ǂwa to imitate
  • Pulmonic consonants
    • Voiced - voiceless unaspirated - voiceless aspirated stop: da skin, ta wild orange, tʰa bee sting
    • Voiced - voiceless unaspirated - voiceless aspirated - ejective affricate: djau expression of surprise, tca to fetch, tsʰe week, tc'a to pour
    • Voiced - voiceless fricative: za to sexually insult, se to see
  • Click consonants
    • Voiced unaspirated - voiced aspirated: gǃai~ puff adder, gǃʰei~ tree
    • Voiceless unaspirated - voiceless aspirated: ǃe~ noise, ǃʰa~ to know
    • Unaffricated - affricated release: ǃo behind, ǃxo elephant
    • Plain - glottalised release: ǃábí to roll up a blanket, ǃ?àbú rifle
    • Plain - nasalised: ǀi rhinoceros, nǀi to sit
• Vowels
  • Plain - nasalised: gǃa rain, gǃa~ red
  • Plain - pharyngealised: nǀom springhare, nǀo̱m big talker
  • Short - long: ǀu to throw, ǀu: to put in

!Kung also distinguishes three to five tones. This article or section uses Ruby annotation. ...

Grammar

Linguistically, !Kung 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. An analytic language (or isolating language) is a language in which the vast majority of morphemes are free morphemes and considered to be full-fledged words. By contrast, in a synthetic language, a word is composed of agglutinated or fused morphemes that denote its syntactic meanings. ...

!Kung distinguishes no formal plural, and the suffixes -si and -mhi are optional in usage. The language's word order is Adverb-Subject-Verb-Object, and in this it is similar to English: "the snake bites the man" is represented by ǂ'aama nǃei zhu (ǂ'aama - snake, nǃei - to bite, zhu - man). Kung-ekoka uses word and sentence tone contours, and has a very finely differentiated vocabulary for the animals, plants and conditions native to the Kalahari Desert, where the language is spoken. For example, the plant genus Grewia is referred to by five different words, representing five different species in this genus. Linguistic typology is the typology that classifies languages by their features. ... The Kalahari Desert (shown in red) The Kalahari Desert is a large arid to semi-arid sandy area in southern Africa extending to some 900,000 km² and covering much of Botswana, and parts of Namibia and South Africa. ...

See also

• !Xu mythology
• !Xu (god)

The !Xu people of southern Africa were both animistic and animatistic; they believed in both personifications and impersonal forces. ... !Xu is a creator god of the Bushmen of southern Africa. ...

References

Snyman, Jan Winston. 1980. The relationship between Angolan !Xu and Zu/'õasi. In Bushman and Hottentot linguistic studies 1979, pp. 1-58. Ed. J. W. Snyman. University of South Africa (UNISA), Pretoria.

External links

• The Ethnologue Report for !Kung-ekoka
• The Ethnologue Report for !O!ung
• The Ethnologue Report for Maligo
• Swadesh word list for !Kung-ekoka
• Swadesh word list for !O!ung
• Alternate names and classification from Göteborgs Universitet.