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The Khoisan languages (also known as the Khoesan or Khoesaan languages) are the click languages of Africa which do not belong to other language families. They include languages indigenous to southern and eastern Africa
Africa

Africa is the world's second-largest and second most-populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km? including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area....
, though some such, as the Khoi languages, appear to have moved to their current locations not long before the Bantu expansion
Bantu expansion

The Bantu expansion was a millennia-long series of migrations of speakers of the original proto-Bantu languages language group. This group is hypothesized to have originated from the southwestern border of modern Nigeria and Cameroon....
. In southern Africa their speakers are the Khoi
Khoi

*The common name of Siamese Rough Bush. *The Khoikhoi people.*A language spoken by the Khoikhoi.*Khoy, a city in Iran.*Influential Shia cleric Grand Ayatollah Abul-Qassim Khoei ...
 and Bushmen
Bushmen

The Bushmen, San, Sho, Basarwa, Kung, or Khwe are indigenous people of southern Africa that spans most areas of South Africa, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Mozambique, Swaziland, Botswana, Namibia, and Angola....
 (Saan), in east Africa the Sandawe and Hadza.






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The Khoisan languages (also known as the Khoesan or Khoesaan languages) are the click languages of Africa which do not belong to other language families. They include languages indigenous to southern and eastern Africa
Africa

Africa is the world's second-largest and second most-populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km? including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area....
, though some such, as the Khoi languages, appear to have moved to their current locations not long before the Bantu expansion
Bantu expansion

The Bantu expansion was a millennia-long series of migrations of speakers of the original proto-Bantu languages language group. This group is hypothesized to have originated from the southwestern border of modern Nigeria and Cameroon....
. In southern Africa their speakers are the Khoi
Khoi

*The common name of Siamese Rough Bush. *The Khoikhoi people.*A language spoken by the Khoikhoi.*Khoy, a city in Iran.*Influential Shia cleric Grand Ayatollah Abul-Qassim Khoei ...
 and Bushmen
Bushmen

The Bushmen, San, Sho, Basarwa, Kung, or Khwe are indigenous people of southern Africa that spans most areas of South Africa, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Mozambique, Swaziland, Botswana, Namibia, and Angola....
 (Saan), in east Africa the Sandawe and Hadza. Many people were exposed to a Khoisan language through the actor N!xau
N!xau

N!xau was a Namibian The Bush farmer and actor who was made famous by his Role s in the 1980 Film The Gods Must Be Crazy and its sequels, in which he played the Kalahari Desert Bushmen Xixo....
 in the 1980 film
1980 in film

The year 1980 in film involved some significant events....
 The Gods Must Be Crazy
The Gods Must Be Crazy

The Gods Must Be Crazy is a film released in 1980, written and directed by Jamie Uys. Set in Botswana and South Africa, it tells the story of Xi, a Bushmen of the Kalahari Desert whose tribe has no knowledge of the world beyond....
.

Prior to the Bantu expansion, it is likely that Khoisan languages, or languages like them, were spread throughout southern and eastern Africa. Today they are restricted to the Kalahari Desert
Kalahari Desert

The Kalahari Desert is a large, arid desert area in southwestern Sub-Saharan Africa extending 900,000 km? , covering much of Botswana and parts of Namibia and South Africa....
, primarily in Namibia
Namibia

Namibia, officially the Republic of Namibia, is a country in southern Africa on the Atlantic Ocean coast. It shares borders with Angola and Zambia to the north, Botswana to the east, and South Africa to the south....
 and Botswana
Botswana

The Republic of Botswana , is a landlocked country in Southern Africa. Citizens of Botswana are called "Batswana" , regardless of ethnicity. Formerly a British protectorate of Bechuanaland Protectorate, Botswana adopted its new name after becoming independent within the Commonwealth of Nations on 30 September 1966....
, and to the Rift Valley
Rift valley

A rift valley is a linear-shaped lowland between highlands or mountain ranges created by the action of a geologic rift or fault . This action is manifest as crustal extension, a spreading apart of the surface which is subsequently further deepened by the forces of erosion....
 in central Tanzania
Tanzania

Tanzania , officially the United Republic of Tanzania , is a country in East Africa that is bordered by Kenya and Uganda on the north, Rwanda, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo on the west, and Zambia, Malawi and Mozambique on the south....
.

Most of the languages are endangered, and several are moribund or extinct. Most have no written record. The only widespread Khoisan language is Nama
Nama language

The Khoekhoe language, or Khoekhoegowab, also known by the ethnic term N?m? and previously the now discouraged term Khoikhoi#Name, is the most populous and widespread of the Khoisan languages....
 of Namibia, with a quarter of a million speakers; Sandawe
Sandawe language

Sandawe or Sandawi is a tonal language spoken by about 40,000 Sandawe people in the Dodoma region of Tanzania. Language use is vigorous among both adults and children, with people in some areas monolingual....
 in Tanzania is second in number with about 40,000, some monolingual; and the Juu
Ju languages

The Juu languages , also known as the !Kung languages , are a dialect continuum spoken in Botswana, Namibia, and Angola. The form a language family together with the ?H?? language....
 language cluster of the northern Kalahari is spoken by some 30,000 people.

Khoisan languages are best known for their use of click consonant
Click consonant

Clicks are speech sounds such as English tsk! tsk! used to express disapproval, or the tchick! used to spur on a horse. In many languages of southern Africa, and in three languages of East Africa, they are ordinary consonants, found for example in the name of the language Xhosa language....
s as phoneme
Phoneme

In human language, a phoneme is the smallest posited linguistically distinctive unit of sound. Phonemes carry no semantic content themselves. In theoretical terms, phonemes are not the physical segment s themselves, but cognitive abstractions or categorizations of them....
s. These are typically written with letters such as !
Postalveolar click

The alveolar or postalveolar clicks are a family of click consonants found only in Africa and in the Damin ritual jargon of Australia.The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents the forward articulation of these sounds is ....
 and ?
Palatal click

The palato-alveolar clicks are a family of click consonants found only in Africa. They are commonly called palatal clicks.The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents the forward articulation of these sounds is ....
. The Ju|'hoan language has some 30 click consonants, not counting clusters, among perhaps 90 phonemes, which include strident
Strident vowel

Strident vowels are strongly pharyngealization vowels accompanied by epiglottal trill, where the larynx is raised and the pharynx constricted, so that either the epiglottis or the arytenoid cartilages vibrate instead of the vocal cords....
 and pharyngealized vowels and four tones. The !Xóõ
!Xóõ language

Taa, also known as !X??, is a Khoisan language with a very large number of phonemes , with at least 58 consonants, 31 vowels, and four tones , or at least 87 consonants, 20 vowels, and two tones , by many counts the most of any known language....
 and ?Hõã languages are similarly complex.

Grammatically, the southern Khoisan languages are generally fairly isolating, with word order being more widely used to indicate grammatical relations than is inflection. The languages of Tanzania, by contrast, have large numbers of inflectional suffixes.

Validity

Khoisan was proposed as one of the four families of African languages in Greenberg's
Joseph Greenberg

Joseph Harold Greenberg was a prominent and controversial American linguistics, principally known for his work in two areas, linguistic typology and the genetic relationship of languages....
 classification (1949-1954, revised in 1963). However, few linguists who study Khoisan languages today accept their unity, and the name "Khoisan" is used by them as a term of convenience without any implication of linguistic validity, much as "Papuan
Papuan languages

The term Papuan languages refers to those languages of the western Pacific which are neither Austronesian languages nor Australian Aboriginal languages....
" and "Australian" are. It has been suggested that the similarities of the Tuu and Juu (or Juu-?Hoan) families are due to a southern African Sprachbund
Sprachbund

A Sprachbund , from the German language word for ?language union?, also known as a linguistic area, convergence area, diffusion area or language crossroads, is a group of languages that have become similar in some way because of geographical proximity and language contact....
 rather than a genealogical relationship, whereas the Khoe (or perhaps Kwadi-Khoe) family is a more recent migrant to the area, and may be related to Sandawe in East Africa.

E.O.J. Westphal
Ernst Oswald Johannes Westphal

Westphal, Ernst Oswald Johannes , was a South African linguistics and an expert in Bantu languages and Khoisan languages.Ernst Westphal was born at Khalava in Vendaland, the son of German people Lutheran missionary parents....
 is particularly known for his denial that the Khoisan languages constitute a language family (Starostin 2003). Bonny Sands (1998) concludes that the family is not demonstrable with current evidence. Dimmendaal (2008) summarizes the general view with, "it has to be concluded that Greenberg’s intuitions on the genetic unity of Khoisan could not be confirmed by subsequent research. Today, the few scholars working on these languages treat the three [southern groups] as independent language families that cannot or can no longer be shown to be genetically related" (p. 841).

Linguists who continue to accept that Khoisan represents a genetic unity include Christopher Ehret
Christopher Ehret

Christopher Ehret , a professor of African History at UCLA since 1968, is a major figure in African history and African historical linguistics, particularly known for his efforts to correlate linguistic taxonomy and reconstruction with the archaeological record....
 (1986, 2003), Anthony Traill
Anthony Traill (linguist)

Professor Anthony Traill was a linguistics , who was the world's foremost authority on a San language called !X??. He published widely on this language, including a dictionary of the language....
 (1986), Henry Honken (1988, 1998), and George Starostin
Georgiy Starostin

Georgiy Sergeevich Starostin is a Russian linguistics researcher at the Center of Comparative Studies at the Russian State University for the Humanities, and a participant at the Santa Fe Institute's Evolution of Human Languages project....
 (2003, 2008).

Classification

The putative branches of Khoisan are often considered independent families, in the absence of a demonstration that they are related according to the standard comparative method
Comparative method

In linguistics, the comparative method is a technique for studying the development of languages. It requires the use of two or more languages. It is opposed to the method of internal reconstruction, which studies the internal development of a single language over time....
.

See Khoe languages
Khoe languages

The Khoe languages are the largest of the non-Bantu languages language family indigenous to southern Africa. They are often considered to be a branch of a suspected Khoisan languages language family, and are known as Central Khoisan in that scenario....
 for speculations on the linguistic history of the region.

Hadza

  • Hadza
    Hadza language

    Hadza is a language isolate spoken by fewer than a thousand people along the shores of Lake Eyasi in Tanzania. Despite the small number of speakers, language use is vigorous, with most children learning it....
     (800 speakers in Tanzania)
Hadza appears to be unrelated to any other language; genetically, the Hadza people are unrelated to the Khoisan peoples of Southern Africa, and their closest relatives may be among the Pygmies of Central Africa.

Sandawe

  • Sandawe
    Sandawe language

    Sandawe or Sandawi is a tonal language spoken by about 40,000 Sandawe people in the Dodoma region of Tanzania. Language use is vigorous among both adults and children, with people in some areas monolingual....
     (40,000 speakers in Tanzania)
There is some indication that Sandawe may be related to the Khoe-Kwadi family, such as a congruent pronominal system and some good Swadesh-list
Swadesh list

A Swadesh list is one of several lists of vocabulary with "basic" meanings, developed by Morris Swadesh in the 1940?50s, which is used in lexicostatistics and glottochronology ....
 matches, but not enough to establish regular sound correspondences. The Sandawe are not related to the Hadza, despite their proximity.

Khoe

The Khoe family is both the most numerous and diverse family of Khoisan languages, with seven living languages and over a quarter million speakers. Although little data is available, proto-Kwadi-Khoe reconstructions have been made for pronouns and some basic vocabulary. However, the Kwadi connection is not accepted by all Khoesanists.
  • ? Kwadi-Khoe
    • Kwadi
      Kwadi language

      Kwadi is an extinct language Khoisan language spoken in the southwest corner of Angola. Three speakers were fluent in Kwadi in 1971, but as of 1981 it was thought to be extinct....
      . Extinct, Angola.
    • Khoe
      Khoe languages

      The Khoe languages are the largest of the non-Bantu languages language family indigenous to southern Africa. They are often considered to be a branch of a suspected Khoisan languages language family, and are known as Central Khoisan in that scenario....
      • Khoekhoe This branch appears to have been affected by the Juu-Tuu sprachbund
        Sprachbund

        A Sprachbund , from the German language word for ?language union?, also known as a linguistic area, convergence area, diffusion area or language crossroads, is a group of languages that have become similar in some way because of geographical proximity and language contact....
        .
        • Nama
          Nama language

          The Khoekhoe language, or Khoekhoegowab, also known by the ethnic term N?m? and previously the now discouraged term Khoikhoi#Name, is the most populous and widespread of the Khoisan languages....
           (250,000 speakers. Ethnonyms Khoekhoen, Nama, Damara. A dialect cluster including ?Aakhoe and Hai?om)
        • Eini (Extinct.)
        • South Khoekhoe
          • Korana
            Korana language

            Korana, or !Ora, is an moribund Khoisan language of South Africa. An ethnic Griqua population of 10,000 live in South Africa, and perhaps Botswana, with half a dozen elderly speakers as of 2008....
             (6+ speakers. Moribund.)
          • Xiri
            Xiri language

            Xiri, or in Afrikaans language orthography Griqua , is a Khoisan language of South Africa. It is related to Nama language. Xiri was once spoken by Griqua along the entire coast of South Africa from Namibia to Lesotho, but it is now moribund language, with less than a hundred scattered speakers left....
             (90 speakers. Moribund. A dialect cluster.)
      • Tshu-Khwe (or Kalahari) Many of these languages have undergone partial click loss.
        • East Tshu-Khwe (East Kalahari)
          • Shua
            Shua language

            Shwa or Shwakhwe, commonly spelled Shua, is a Khoisan language of Botswana. It is spoken in central Botswana , but is also spoken in parts of the Chobe District in the extreme north of Botswana....
             (6000 speakers. A dialect cluster including Deti, Ts'ixa, |Xaise, and Ganádi)
          • Tsoa
            Tsoa language

            Tsoa is a Khoisan language of Botswana and Zimbabwe spoken by about 9300 speakers ....
             (9300 speakers. A dialect cluster including Cire Cire and Kua)
        • West Tshu-Khwe (West Kalahari)
          • Kxoe
            Kxoe language

            Kxoe is a Khoisan language dialect continuum of Namibia, Angola, Botswana, South Africa, and a few in Zambia, with some 11,000 speakers. It is learned locally as a second language in Namibia, but the language is being lost in Botswana as speakers shift to Tswana language, under threat of deportation if they do not speak that language....
             (11,000 speakers. A dialect cluster including ?Ani and Buga)
          • Naro
            Naro language

            Naro is a List of Khoisan languages#Khoe .28or Central Khoisan.29 spoken in the Ghanzi District of Botswana and in eastern Namibia, where it is sometimes called Nharo....
             (14,000 speakers. A dialect cluster.)
          • G?ana-G|wi (4500 speakers. A dialect cluster including G?ana
            G?ana language

            G?ana is a Khoisan language of Botswana with about 2000 speakers . It is part of the G?ana-G|wi dialect cluster, and closely related to Naro language....
            , G|wi, and ?Haba)


A Hai?om language is listed in most Khoisan references. A century ago the Hai?om people spoke a Ju dialect, probably close to !Kung, but they now speak a divergent dialect of Nama. Thus their language is variously said to be extinct or to have 16,000 speakers, to be Ju or to be Khoe. (Their numbers have been included under Nama above.) They are known as the Saa by the Nama, and this is the source of the word San
Bushmen

The Bushmen, San, Sho, Basarwa, Kung, or Khwe are indigenous people of southern Africa that spans most areas of South Africa, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Mozambique, Swaziland, Botswana, Namibia, and Angola....
.

Tuu

The Tuu family consists of two language clusters, which are related to each other at about the distance of Khoekhoe and Tshukhwe within Khoe. They are typologically very similar to the Juu languages (below), but have not been demonstrated to be related to them genealogically. (The similarities may be an areal
Sprachbund

A Sprachbund , from the German language word for ?language union?, also known as a linguistic area, convergence area, diffusion area or language crossroads, is a group of languages that have become similar in some way because of geographical proximity and language contact....
 feature.)
  • Tuu
    Tuu languages

    The Tuu or Taa-!Kwi languages are a language family consisting of two language clusters spoken in Botswana and South Africa. The relationship between the two is not doubted, but is not close....
    • Taa
      • !Xóõ
        !Xóõ language

        Taa, also known as !X??, is a Khoisan language with a very large number of phonemes , with at least 58 consonants, 31 vowels, and four tones , or at least 87 consonants, 20 vowels, and two tones , by many counts the most of any known language....
         (4200 speakers. A dialect cluster.)
      • Lower Nossob (Two dialects, |'Auni and |Haasi. Extinct.)
    • !Kwi
      • N?ng (A dialect cluster. Moribund, with 8 N|u speakers.)
      • |Xam
        |Xam language

        , or '|Xam Kak!'e', is an List of extinct languages Khoisan language of South Africa, part of the List of Khoisan languages#.21Kwi group. It was closely related to the N|u language, which still has a few speakers....
         (A dialect cluster. Extinct.)
      • ?Ungkue (A dialect cluster. Extinct.)
      • ?Xegwi
        ?Xegwi language

        ?Xegwi is an List of extinct languages List of Khoisan languages#Ta.E2.80.99a-.21Kwi .28or Southern Khoisan.29 of South Africa, near the Swaziland border....
         (Extinct.)

Juu-?Hoan

The Juu-?Hoan family is a distant relationship, only recently proposed, that is being increasingly accepted.
  • Juu-?Hoan
    Juu-?Hoan languages

    The Juu-?Hoan or X!un-H?oan languages form a recently proposed language family linking the isolate with the Ju languages dialect cluster....
    • ?Hõã (200 speakers, Botswana. Moribund.)
    • Juu
      Ju languages

      The Juu languages , also known as the !Kung languages , are a dialect continuum spoken in Botswana, Namibia, and Angola. The form a language family together with the ?H?? language....
       (also !Kung, formerly Northern Khoisan) is a single dialect cluster. (~45,000 speakers.) Well known dialects are !Kung (!Xuu)
      !Kung language

      !Kung or !'O!Kung is a group of northern dialects of the Juu languages dialect continuum, which is sometimes classified as part of a Khoisan languages....
      , Ju|'hoan, and ?Kx'au?'ein.


Other "Click Languages"


Not all languages using clicks as phonemes are considered Khoisan. Most are neighboring Bantu languages
Bantu languages

The Bantu languages constitute a grouping belonging to the Niger-Congo languages family. This grouping is deep down in the genealogical tree of the Bantoid grouping, which in turn is deep down in the Niger-Congo tree....
 in southern Africa: the Nguni languages Xhosa
Xhosa language

Xhosa is one of the official languages of South Africa. Xhosa is spoken by approximately Xhosa, or about 18% of the South African population. Like most Bantu languages, Xhosa is a Tone , that is, the same sequence of consonants and vowels can have different meanings when said with a rising or falling or high or low intonation....
, Zulu
Zulu language

Zulu , is a language of the Zulu people with about 10 million speakers, the vast majority of whom live in South Africa. Zulu is the most widely spoken home language in South Africa as well as being understood by over 50% of the population ....
, Swazi, Phuthi
Phuthi language

Phuthi is a Nguni Bantu language spoken in southern Lesotho and areas in South Africa adjacent to the same border. The closest substantial living relative of Phuthi is Swati language , spoken in Swaziland and the Mpumalanga province of South Africa....
, and Ndebele
Ndebele language

There are at least two languages commonly called Ndebele:*The Northern Ndebele language, a Nguni languages spoken in Zimbabwe*The Southern Ndebele language, classified as Nguni languages or Sotho-Tswana languages, spoken in South Africa, heavily influenced by surrounding Sotho-Tswana languages and therefore mostly classified a...
; Sotho; Yeyi
Yeyi language

Yeyi or ShiYeyi is a endangered language Bantu languages spoken by 45,000 people along the Okavango River in Namibia and Botswana. Yeyi, influenced by Ju languages languages, is one of several Bantu languages along the Okavango with clicks....
 in Botswana
Botswana

The Republic of Botswana , is a landlocked country in Southern Africa. Citizens of Botswana are called "Batswana" , regardless of ethnicity. Formerly a British protectorate of Bechuanaland Protectorate, Botswana adopted its new name after becoming independent within the Commonwealth of Nations on 30 September 1966....
; and Mbukushu
Mbukushu language

Mbukushu or ThiMbukushu is a Bantu language spoken by 45,000 people along the Okavango River in Namibia, where it is a national language; in Botswana; in Angola; and in Zambia, where it is an official regional language....
, Kwangali
Kwangali language

Kwangali, also known as RuKwangali and SiKwangali, is a Bantu language spoken by 85,000 people along the Okavango River in Namibia, where it is a national language, and in Angola....
, and Gciriku
Gciriku language

Gciriku or Diriku is a Bantu language spoken by 305,000 people along the Okavango River in Namibia, where it is a national language, in Botswana, and in Angola....
 in the Caprivi Strip
Caprivi Strip

Caprivi, sometimes called the Caprivi Strip or the Okavango Strip and formally known as Itenge, is a panhandle of Namibia eastwards about 450 km , between Botswana on the south, Angola and Zambia to the north, and Okavango Region to the west....
; but there is also the South Cushitic
South Cushitic languages

The South Cushitic or Rift languages of Tanzania belong to the Afro-Asiatic languages family. The most numerous is Iraqw language, with half a million speakers....
 language Dahalo
Dahalo language

Dahalo is an endangered language South Cushitic languages language spoken by at most 400 people on the Kenyan coast near the mouth of the Tana River....
 in Kenya
Kenya

The Republic of Kenya is a country in East Africa. It is bordered by Ethiopia to the north, Somalia to the northeast, Tanzania to the south, Uganda to the west, and Sudan to the northwest, with the Indian Ocean running along the southeast border....
, and an extinct northern Australian
Australian Aboriginal languages

The Indigenous Australians languages comprise several Language families and languages and language isolates native to Australia and a few nearby islands, but by convention excluding Tasmania....
 ritual language called Damin
Damin

Damin was a ceremonial language register used by the advanced initiated men of the Lardil and the Yangkaal tribes in Aboriginal Australia....
.

The Bantu languages adopted the use of clicks from neighboring, displaced, or absorbed Khoisan populations, often through intermarriage, while the Dahalo are thought to have retained clicks from an earlier language when they shifted
Language shift

Language shift, sometimes referred to as language transfer or language replacement or assimilation, is the progressive process whereby a speech community of a language shifts to speaking another language....
 to speaking a Cushitic language; if so, the pre-Dahalo language may have been something like Hadza or Sandawe. Damin is an invented ritual language, and has nothing to do with Khoisan.

Bibliography


  • Barnard, A. 1988. "Kinship, language and production: a conjectural history of Khoisan social structure." In Africa: Journal of the International African Institute 58.1, 29-50.


  • Ehret, Christopher. 1986. "Proposals on Khoisan reconstruction." In African Hunter-Gatherers (international symposium), edited by Franz Rottland & Rainer Vossen, 105-130. Sprache und Geschichte in Afrika, special issue 7.1. Hamburg: Helmut Buske Verlag.


  • Ehret, Christopher. 2003. "Toward reconstructing Proto-South Khoisan." In Mother Tongue 8.


  • Greenberg, Joseph H. 1955. Studies in African Linguistic Classification. New Haven: Compass Publishing Company. (Reprints, with minor corrections, a series of eight articles published in the Southwestern Journal of Anthropology from 1949 to 1954.)


  • Greenberg, Joseph H. 1963. The Languages of Africa
    The Languages of Africa

    The Languages of Africa is a 1963 book of essays by Joseph Greenberg, in which he sets forth a genetic classification of African languages that, with some changes, continues to be the most commonly used one today....
    . (Heavily revised version of Greenberg 1955.) Bloomington: Indiana University Press. (From the same publisher: second, revised edition, 1966; third edition, 1970. All three editions simultaneously published at The Hague by Mouton & Co.)


  • Güldemann, Tom and Rainer Vossen. 2000. "Khoisan." In African Languages: An Introduction, edited by Bernd Heine and Derek Nurse, 99-122. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.


  • Hastings, Rachel. 2001. "Evidence for the genetic unity of Southern Khoesan." In Cornell Working Papers in Linguistics 18, 225-245.


  • Honken, Henry. 1988. "Phonetic correspondences among Khoisan affricates." In New Perspectives on the Study of Khoisan, edited by Rainer Vossen, 47-65. Quellen zur Khoisan-Forschung 7. Hamburg: Helmut Buske Verlag, 1988.


  • Honken, Henry. 1998. "Types of sound correspondence patterns in Khoisan languages." In Language, Identity and Conceptualization among the Khoisan, edited by Mathias Schladt, 171-193. Quellen zur Khoisan-Forschung/Research in Khoisan studies 15. Köln: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag.


  • Köhler, O. 1971. "Die Khoe-sprachigen Buschmänner der Kalahari." In Forschungen zur allgemeinen und regionalen Geschichte (Festschrift Kurt Kayser), 373–411. Wiesbaden: F. Steiner.


  • Sands, Bonny. 1998. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag.


  • Sands, Bonny. 1998. "Comparison and classification of Khoisan languages." In Language History and Linguistic Description in Africa, edited by Ian Maddieson and Thomas J. Hinnebusch, 75-85. Trenton: Africa World Press.


  • Schladt, Mathias (editor). 1998. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag.


  • Starostin, George. 2003. (Originally published in Mother Tongue 8 (2003), 81-126.)


  • Starostin, George. 2008. (Originally published in Aspects of Comparative Linguistics 3 (2008), 337-470, Moscow: RSUH Publishers.)


  • Traill, Anthony. 1986. "Do the Khoi have a place in the San? New data on Khoisan linguistic relationships." In African Hunter-gatherers (international symposium), Franz Rottland and Rainer Vossen, 407-430. Sprache und Geschichte in Afrika, special issue 7.1. Hamburg: Helmut Buske Verlag.


  • Treis, Yvonne. 1998. "Names of Khoisan languages and their variants." In Language, Identity, and Conceptualization among the Khoisan, edited by Matthias Schladt. Köln: Rüdiger Köppe, 463–503.


  • Vossen, Rainer. 1997. Die Khoe-Sprachen. Ein Beitrag zur Erforschung der Sprachgeschichte Afrikas. Köln: Rüdiger Köppe.


  • Westphal, E.O.J. 1971. "The click languages of Southern and Eastern Africa." In Current Trends in Linguistics, Volume 7: Linguistics in Sub-Saharan Africa, edited by T.A. Sebeok. Berlin: Mouton, 367–420.


  • Winter, J.C. 1981. "Die Khoisan-Familie." In Die Sprachen Afrikas, edited by Bernd Heine, Thilo C. Schadeberg, and Ekkehard Wolff. Hamburg: Helmut Buske, 329–374.


External links


  • at Ethnologue (does not correspond to the views of many Khoisanists)


  • at by Jouni Filip Maho