V.

The Khoisan Family

The Khoisan (or Click) languages comprise the smallest language family in Africa, with only around 200,000 speakers of the 30 or so languages altogether. Most of these languages are spoken by the Khoikhoi and San peoples of southern Africa; the largest of them is Nama. Far to the north-east in Tanzania are two other representatives of this family: Sandawe and the much smaller Hadza (800 speakers). The Khoisan languages are best known for the unusual click consonants characteristic of most of them; in some Khoisan languages nearly every word begins with a click. The production of these sounds involves a sucking action of the tongue; by the positioning of the tongue and the way air is released into the mouth, distinctive kinds of clicks are produced. When these languages are written, the clicks are represented either by otherwise unused letters such as C, Q, X, or by special symbols such as /, //, !, “, and [, as can be seen in the name of the language =/kx'au//'ein, spoken in Namibia and Botswana. Some of the Khoisan languages have a system of grammatical gender, which is found elsewhere in Africa only in the Afro-Asiatic family.