The Khoekhoe /ˈkɔɪkɔɪ/ language (Khoekhoegowab), or Nama (Namagowab) /ˈnɑːmə/, Damara (ǂNūkhoegowab), Nama/Damara, and Hottentot, is the most common of the non-Bantu languages of Southern Africa that make much use of click consonants. Because of that, Khoekhoe used to be Khoisan, but this group is not used now. It is part of the Khoe language family, and is used in Namibia, Botswana, and South Africa, usually by three ethnic groups: Namakhoen, ǂNūkhoen, and Haiǁomkhoen.
History
The Haiǁom, who before used a Juu language, moved to Khoekhoe. The name Khoekhoen, is from the word khoe "person", copied twice and the suffix -n to be the general plural. Georg Friedrich Wreede was the first European to look at the language, after going to ǁHui!gaeb (later Cape Town) in 1659.
Status
Khoekhoe is a national language in Namibia. In Namibia and South Africa, state-owned broadcasting corporations make and give out radio programs in Khoekhoegowab.
It is thought that only about 167,000 users of Khoekhoegowab live in Africa, making it an endangered language. In 2019, the University of Cape Town did an amount of short courses (classes) teaching the language, and on 21 September 2020 started its new Khoi and San Centre. An undergraduate degree series of classes is being developed.
Dialects
Present-day scholars generally see three dialects:
Nama–Damara, with Sesfontein Damara
Haiǁom
ǂĀkhoe, itself a dialect cluster, and middle between Haiǁom and the Kalahari Khoe languages
They are different enough that it possibly may be thought of as two or three different languages.
Eini (extinct) is not far from it but is now counted as a distinct language.
Phonology
Vowels
Khoekhoe uses 5 vowel qualities, seen as oral (sounds produced with the help of the mouth) /i e a o u/ and nasal /ĩ ã ũ/. /u/ is strongly rounded, /o/ only softly. /a/ is the only vowel with a good amount of allophony; it is pronounced [ə] before /i/ or /u/.
Tone
Nama is seen as having three or four tones, /á, ā, à/ or /a̋, á, à, ȁ/, that may take place on different mora (vowels and final nasal consonants). The high sound is higher when it takes place on one of the high vowels (/í ú/) or on a nasal (/ń ḿ/) than on mid or low vowels (/é á ó/).
The sounds combine, (move together) starting a small number of 'tone melodies' (word sounds), which have sandhi forms in certain syntactic places. The most important melodies, in the way that it is said and main sandhi forms, are as follows:
Stress
Under a phrase (part of a sentence), lexical words receive greater stress than grammatical words. Using a word, the first syllable receives the most stress. Syllables afterwards get less and less stress and are spoken more and more quickly.
Consonants
Nama has 31 consonants: 20 clicks and only 11 non-clicks.
Non-clicks
Orthography in brackets.
Between vowels, /p/ is said [β] and /t/ is said [ɾ]. The affricates strongly aspirate, and may be thought of phonemically as aspirated stops; in Korana they use [tʰ, kʰ].
Beach (1938) said that the Khoekhoe of the time had a velar lateral ejective affricate, [kʟ̝̊ʼ], commonly seen in languages with clicks. This sound no longer occurs in Khoekhoe but remains in its cousin Korana.
Clicks
The clicks are twice articulated consonants. Each click consists of one of four primary articulations or "influxes" and one of five secondary articulation or "effluxes". The mix results in 20 phonemes.
The aspiration on the aspirated clicks is usually light but is 'raspier' than the aspirated nasal clicks, with a sound like the ch of Scottish loch. The glottalised clicks are clearly voiceless because of the hold before the release, and they are used as simple voiceless clicks in the traditional orthography. The nasal part is not able to be heard in initial position; the voiceless nasal component of the aspirated clicks is also hard to hear when not between vowels, so to foreign ears, it may sound like a longer but less raspy version of the contour clicks.
Tindall says that European learners usually pronounce the lateral clicks by placing the tongue against the side teeth and that this way is "harsh and foreign to the native ear". The Namaqua cover the whole of the palate with the tongue and produce the sound "as far back in the palate as possible".