Khoisan Languages, 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 Khoisan languages 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”. Historically, most of southern Africa was probably populated by aboriginal Khoisan-speakers, where the Khoikhoi (“Hottentot”) and San (“Bushmen”) peoples were nomadic cattle-herders and hunter-gatherers respectively. However, due to the expansion of Bantu-speaking peoples from the north and the European occupation of the area, many Khoisan languages have either disappeared or are seriously threatened with extinction, and only about 30 remain with between 200,000 and 400,000 speakers in total, used in communities that are generally marginalized and stigmatized (estimates here based on Güldemann and Vossen 2000).

The genetic unity and internal composition of the putative Khoisan phylum is contentious, due in part to the absence of reliable language data. Recent proposals, however, make a basic cut between Khoe and Non-Khoe groupings (though without any explicit genealogical basis). The main Khoe language is Nama (Damara), a member of the North Khoekhoe subgroup. Khoekhoe languages are spoken by an estimated 120,000 to 200,000 people in Namibia as well as Angola, Botswana, South Africa, and Zambia. Other Khoisan languages are spoken by no more than a few hundred speakers. At some distance to the north-east are two other Khoisan languages—Hadza (800 speakers) and Sandawe (40,000). These remnant languages are spoken in Tanzania, where they are surrounded by Bantu languages.

The sound systems of Khoisan languages 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). Clicks are produced by varying the position of the tongue, and sucking air into the mouth cavity to produce the click burst, and the various types are sometimes represented in the orthography with such special symbols as | (dental), || (lateral), and ! (alveolar), cf. the language names |Xam, ||Ani, and !Ora. Subject-verb-object word order is common in Khoisan languages (except in the Khoe group which has subject-object-verb order). See also Phonetics; Parts of Speech; African Languages.