Good morning, Interweb.
Let’s Worldbuild!
If you've ever watched “The Gods Must Be Crazy” or listened to Miriam Makeba's “Click
Song” it'll come as no surprise to you that, in some languages, consonants sound like,
/ǀ/, /ǁ/ and /!/.
If this is news to you, welcome to the wonderful world of non-pulmonic consonants, aka click
consonants!
What?
So, the IPA recognizes 5 principal clicks.
The bilabial, dental, (post)alveolar, palatal and lateral clicks.
Surprisingly, most of us, regardless of language, use these sounds on a very regular basis without
ever realizing it.
The bilabial click, /ʘ/, is a sort of lip smacking sound, almost like blowing a kiss
except without pursing the lips.
/ʘ/
The dental click, /ǀ/, is that disapproving tutting sound we regularly make.
/ǀ/.
Interestingly, in some languages, like Bulgarian and Greek, a dental click accompanied by a
tipping of the head upwards, [ǀ], means “no”.
The (post)alveolar click, /ǃ/, is commonly used to imitate the sound of a horse trotting.
/ǃ/
The lateral click, /ǁ/, is used to call animals, like horses and dogs.
/ǁ/
Admittedly, the final click, the palatal click, /ǂ/, isn't used all that often by english
speakers.
It's a kinda high pitched, finger-snapping sort of sound - produced by sucking the flattened
tongue against the roof of the mouth and abruptly snapping it backwards.
/ǂ/
So, hey, if I use 4 of these 5 ( /ʘ/, /ǀ/, /ǃ/, /ǁ/ ) clicks on a regular basis does
that mean I speak a click-language?
Eh ... no!
English obviously isn't a click language.
What clicks do occur in english occur para-linguistically.
That is, whilst they are sounds and they do carry meaning, they don't go into making words
- you aren't going to find clicks in an english dictionary.
Who?
Of the over 2500 languages surveyed by the World Atlas of Language Structures Online,
only 1.8% where found to feature clicks phonemically and, rather than being spread out around the
world, they are all localized in one area: Sub-saharan Africa.
Now, not every african language is a click language but every click language is african
– with one notable exception; we'll get to you in a bit Australia.
Of all the African click languages, only a few have clicks as an original feature.
Namely, all Khoe, Tuu and Kx'a languages – found around the Kalahari desert in present day
Botswana, Namibia and South Africa – and two east African rift valley languages: Hadza
and Sandawe.
These languages collectively, and despite the geographical separation, are known as
the Khoisan languages.
Some neighboring Bantu languages, like Xhosa or Zulu, borrowed their clicks, either directly
or indirectly, from a Khoisan language.
That is, clicks arose naturally in the Khoisan languages and over time spread to the neighboring
Bantu languages.
And there are marked difference between Khoisan clicks and Bantu clicks.
Khoisan languages tend to feature large click inventories.
Taa, for example, has, depending on how you're counting, between 45 and 115 contrastive clicks.
With 70% of their words beginning with a click.
In contrast, Bantu languages tend to have smaller click inventories.
For example, Sotho, spoken primarily in Lesotho and South Africa has only 3 clicks.
Furthermore, Khoisan language only allow root-initial clicks whereas Bantu languages also allow
syllable-initial clicks.
Interestingly, no known language ends a word or syllable with a click.
But hang on if the Bantu click languages borrowed their clicks from the Khoisan languages, where
did the Khoisan Languages get there clicks from?
Where?
So, it was once believed that original human language may have had clicks.
Studies done in 2003 found that speakers of Jul'hoan and Hadza have the most divergent
mitochondrial DNA, thus it was inferred that the primary genetic divisions of humanity
are the Jul'hoan, the Hadza and everyone else.
As two of the three groups spoke click languages it was inferred that perhaps the original
human language was a click language.
Now, this study was based on some pretty dubious assumptions.
It assumed that the Hadza and Jul'hoan languages were never subject to language shift, that
neither group borrowed clicks from other languages and the neither developed clicks independently
of one another.
There is, quite literally, no evidence that backs up the assertions made in the study.
And, worse still, it's based on the outdated idea that so called “primitive” people
speak so called “primitive” languages.
Which is just nonsense!
Present day linguists believe that clicks, given their relatively complexity, arose quite
late in the development of language.
They are no more a ancient relic than any other sound.
But how, and why, clicks developed still remains a mystery.
Our best guess it that they evolved from sequences of non-click consonant clusters.
/tk/ for example could quiet easily become /ǀ/.
And there is actual, real life, evidence to back this up.
In Ndau and Tonga, for example, a bilabial click is a common allophone of /mw/.
And, as a rule, languages lose clicks in a similar manner.
Some East Kalahari languages are currently undergoing click loss.
The lost click is often replaced by a consonant with a similar manner and place of articulation.
For example, (post)alveolar clicks /ǃ/ tend to mutate into velar stops /k/ and /g/.
How?
Languages borrow sounds from other languages all the time.
But usually those sounds cross over as part of words.
Consider the /ʒ/ sound in measure and pleasure...all words borrowed into English from French.
But when it comes to click languages substitution is often more common than assimilation: sounds
are often borrowed and substituted directly into pre-existing words.
Imagine “cat” suddenly became /ǁat/
How this occurred is, again, up for debate but one possibility, at least in Xhosa and
Zulu cultures, is hlonipha.
Hlonipha is a system of ritual avoidance observed as a mark of respect by Xhosa and Zulu wives
towards their male relatives by marriage: a sort of code of manners, observed in the
avoidance of names and similar sounding words.
For example, if a Zulu wife's father-in-law was called Nicholas Cage, she would not be
permitted by say the words Nicholas and Cage, or any other word that sounds like Nicholas
and Cage.
To get around these restrictions one could paraphrase.
Instead of saying Nicholas Cage one could say “The-actor-from-kick-ass-and-lord-of-war”
- but that's just cumbersome.
Instead, one could substitute sounds into the taboo words.
Nicholas could become /ǂɪkələs/ for example.
This would mean no paraphrasing or inventing new words and everyone would still understand
everyone else whilst still being respectful.
Once employed in this manner, clicks quickly became standardized and, given the link to
the respect speech hlonipha, they began to be used in a more general sense when speakers
wished to sound polite, i.e., clicks spread.
And this may well the how clicks transferred from the Khoisan languages into the neighboring
Bantu languages.
Australia!
Spoken by the Lardil and Yangkaal tribes in Aboriginal Australia, Damin is the world's
only non-african click language.
Which is cool, but cooler still is the fact that it's an artificially constructed language!
And it's said to have been created by a mythological figure in Dreamtime – a sort of golden age
in Aboriginal mythology when the first ancestors where created!
Traditionally, Damin was taught to the men of these tribes during their Lukuru and Warama
initiation ceremonies.
So quite literally to become an adult one had to learn a conlang.
These, oftentimes gruesome, ceremonies have been declining recently and as a result Damin
is now functionally extinct.
Rather ironically and forebodingly, Damin translates as “being silent”.
Most click languages, african or otherwise, are falling silent.
Many are endangered, some just plain extinct.
Which is a great shame.I mean, listen to this.
This...this is beauty!
Good morning, Interweb!
To paraphrase John Green: mispronouncing words is my thing!
Or rather, mispronouncing words is my thing, because internet source material frequently
lacks IPA transcriptions - I'm looking at you wikipedia and your practical orthography.
Being unable to learn how foreign words are pronounced is particularly debilitating if
you, I dunno, want to make linguistics videos.
On the internet.
You know, with speaking in them.
So, ye, mispronouncing words is my thing, but not by choice or for lack of trying.
Also, learning some entirely new phonemic inventories over of the course of a 3 weeks
period probably didn't help matters.
Anyways, all this is all to say that if you, dear viewer, know how some of the foreign
words in this video should be pronounced, please, please, please let me know down in
the comments.
As always, click the links on screen or in the description for more Artifexian content.
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Thank you all so much for watching.
Edgar out!!