Everything about The Khoe Languages totally explained
The
Khoe languages are the largest of the non-
Bantu language families indigenous to southern Africa. They are often considered to be a branch of a suspected
Khoisan language family, and are known as
Central Khoisan in that scenario. The nearest relative of the Khoe family is the extinct and poorly attested
Kwadi language of
Angola. This larger group, for which pronouns and some basic vocabulary have been reconstructed, is called
Kwadi-Khoe. Beyond that, the nearest relative may be the
Sandawe isolate; the Sandawe pronoun system is very similar to that of Kwadi-Khoe, but there are not enough known correlations for regular sound correspondences to be worked out.
The most numerous and only well known Khoe language is
Nama of
Namibia, also known as Khoekhoegowab or
Hottentot. The rest of the family is found predominantly in the
Kalahari Desert of
Botswana.
The Khoe languages were the first Khoisan languages known to European colonists, and are famous for their
clicks, though these are not as extensive as in other Khoisan language families. There are two primary branches of the family,
Khoekhoe of Namibia and
South Africa, and
Tshu-Khwe of Botswana and
Zimbabwe. Except for Nama, they're under pressure from national or regional languages such as
Tswana.
History
Tom Güldemann believes agro-pastoralist people speaking the Khoe-Kwadi proto-language entered modern-day Botswana about 2000 years ago from the northwest (that is, in the direction of the modern Sandawe), where they'd likely acquired agriculture from the expanding
Bantu, at a time when the Kalahari was more amenable to agriculture. The ancestors of the Kwadi (and perhaps
Damara) continued west, whereas those who settled in the Kalahari absorbed speakers of
ǂHoan-Juu languages. Thus the Khoe family proper has ǂHoan-Juu influence. These immigrants were ancestral to the north-eastern Kalahari peoples (Eastern Tshu-Khwe branch linguistically), whereas ǂHoan-Juu neighbors to the southwest who shifted to Khoe were ancestral to the Western Tshu-Khwe branch.
Later desiccation of the Kalahari lead to the adoption of a
hunter-gatherer economy, and preserved the Kalahari peoples from absorption by the agricultural Bantu when they spread south.
Those Khoe who continued southwestwards retained pastoralism, and became the Khoekhoe. They mixed extensively with speakers of
Tuu languages, absorbing features of their languages. The expansion of the
Nama people into Namibia, and their absorption of client peoples such as the Damara and
Haiǁom, took place in the 16th century and later, about the time of European contact and colonization.
Classification
Language classifications may list one or two dozen Khoe languages. Because many are
dialect clusters, there's a level of subjectivity involved in identifying them. Counting each dialect cluster as a unit results in nine languages, not counting two related languages:
| label2=South Khoekhoe
| 2=
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| label2=Kalahari (Tshu-Khwe)
| 2=
| label2=West Kalahari
| 2=
}}
}}
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- Nama (ethnonyms Khoekhoen, Nama, Damara) is a dialect cluster including ǂAakhoe and Haiǁom
- Xiri is a dialect cluster also known as Griqua (Afrikaans spelling) or Cape Hottentot.
- Shua is a dialect cluster including Deti, Tsʼixa, ǀXaise, and Ganádi
- Tsoa is a dialect cluster including Cire Cire and Kua
- Kxoe is a dialect cluster including ǁAni and Buga
- Naro is a dialect cluster
- Gǁana is a dialect cluster including Gǁana proper, Gǀwi, and ǂHaba
Further Information
Get more info on 'Khoe Languages'.
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