San languages

E538822

San languages are a group of indigenous Southern African languages, many featuring distinctive click consonants, spoken by the San (Bushmen) peoples.

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Statements (96)

Predicate Object
instanceOf indigenous language group
language family
contrastedWith Bantu languages NERFINISHED
Indo-European languages NERFINISHED
Khoekhoe languages
documentedIn ethnographic records
linguistic grammars
phonetic studies
endangeredIn Angola NERFINISHED
Botswana NERFINISHED
Namibia NERFINISHED
South Africa NERFINISHED
hasCharacteristic areally related features
click consonants
complex phoneme inventories
complex verb morphology in some languages
elaborate demonstrative systems in some languages
elaborate kinship terminology
endangered status
extensive borrowing among neighboring languages
high degree of linguistic diversity
language shift to dominant regional languages
large consonant inventories
oral tradition
primarily unwritten languages
rich system of click accompaniments
rich system of click types
small speaker populations per language
tonal languages
use of alveolar clicks in some languages
use of aspirated clicks in some languages
use of complex syllable structures
use of contour tones in some languages
use of dental clicks in some languages
use of ejective consonants
use of elaborate spatial deixis
use of evidentiality in some languages
use of extensive consonant clusters in some languages
use of gender distinctions in pronouns in some languages
use of glottalized clicks in some languages
use of glottalized consonants
use of ideophones
use of inclusive–exclusive distinction in first person plural in some languages
use of labial clicks in some languages
use of lateral clicks in some languages
use of nasal clicks in some languages
use of nasalized vowels
use of noun class–like systems in some languages
use of palatal clicks in some languages
use of pharyngeal consonants in some languages
use of prenasalized clicks in some languages
use of register tones in some languages
use of uvular consonants in some languages
use of voiced clicks in some languages
hasExampleLanguage !Xóõ NERFINISHED
Juǀʼhoan NERFINISHED
Khwe NERFINISHED
Kxoe
Naro NERFINISHED
Nǀuu NERFINISHED
Taa NERFINISHED
Tsʼixa NERFINISHED
ǀXam NERFINISHED
ǂHoan NERFINISHED
ǂʼAmkoe NERFINISHED
ǃXuun NERFINISHED
hasExtinctLanguage many other poorly documented varieties
ǀXam NERFINISHED
region Angola NERFINISHED
Botswana NERFINISHED
Namibia NERFINISHED
South Africa NERFINISHED
Zambia NERFINISHED
Zimbabwe NERFINISHED
southern Mozambique
researchedBy field linguists
researchedFor anthropological linguistics
historical linguistics
language typology
phonetics
phonology
spokenBy Bushmen NERFINISHED
San peoples NERFINISHED
spokenIn Southern Africa
subgroupOf Khoisan languages NERFINISHED
threatenedBy dominance of Afrikaans
dominance of Bantu languages
dominance of English
formal schooling in other languages
socioeconomic marginalization of San peoples
urbanization
usedBy hunter-gatherer communities
pastoralist communities in some areas
usedFor ritual practices
storytelling traditions
traditional ecological knowledge transmission

Referenced by (1)

Full triples — surface form annotated when it differs from this entity's canonical label.

Wilhelm Bleek studiedLanguage San languages