Map showing the distribution of the Khoi-San languages.
This article is about the Khoisan language group. For the Khoisan ethnic group, see Khoisan.
The Khoisan languages comprise the smallest phylum of African languages. Historically, they were mainly spoken by the Khoi and Bushmen (San) people. Today they are only spoken in the Kalahari Desert in south-western Africa, and a small area in Tanzania. The languages are becoming increasingly rare; several are known to have become extinct. Many of them have no written record. The Hadza and Sandawe languages in Tanzania are generally classified as Khoisan, but are extremely distant (linguistically and geographically) from the others. Many linguists regard the Khoisan phylum as a yet unproved hypothesis.
They are notable for the use of click consonants as phonemes, including the Kung-ekoka language, which has in excess of 50 click consonants and over 140 separate phonemes, and the !Xóő language with its giant phoneme inventory and strident and pharyngealized sounds. Many people were exposed to this group of languages through the Bushman language used in the 1980 film The Gods Must Be Crazy.
The only other languages using clicks as phonemes are NguniBantu languages, such as Xhosa and Zulu in South Africa, Sesotho (also spoken in South Africa and Lesotho), the South Cushitic Dahalo language, and an artificial ceremonial language called 'Damin', spoken by some Australian Aborigines. All of these languages except Damin are believed to have adopted the use of clicks from neighboring Khoisan populations.
Grammatically, the Khoisan languages are generally fairly isolating. Suffixes are often used, but word order is overall more widely used than inflection.
The Khoisanlanguage family is the smallest of the languages families of Africa.
Many of the Khoisanlanguages have five vowels /i/, /e/, /a/, /o/, /u/ which can be produced with additional features, such as nasalization, pharyngealization, and different voice qualities such as breathy and creaky voice, sometimes resulting in up to 40 different vowels.
The Khoisanlanguages differ in the number of such combinations from a low of 20 in Nama to a high of 83 in Kxoe.
KhoisanLanguages, African language family (considered by some to be the oldest language family in Africa), spoken by small populations in southern and south-western Africa (especially Botswana and Namibia).
The Khoisanlanguages were formerly known as “Hottentot” and “Bushmen” languages, and the term “Khoisan” is composed of the Nama (formerly Hottentot) words khoi “person” and san “foragers”.
The sound systems of Khoisanlanguages are complex and they include the so-called “clicks” (these unique consonants have been borrowed into some contiguous Bantu languages such as Xhosa and Zulu).
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