Nǁng language
Endangered Tuu language of South Africa
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
NÇng ([áµÇÅ]) or NÇÅÇke is an almost extinct Tuu language spoken in South Africa. It is commonly known by the ambiguous name of its only spoken dialect[citation needed] NÇuu (NÇhuki); the ÇʼAuni name for the NÇuu, ÇKhomani, is used by the South African government. NÇng had been thought extinct and was no longer spoken on a daily basis when rediscovered in the 1990s, as the two dozen elderly speakers lived in different villages and the younger generations had shifted to the Khoekhoe language. As of October 2025, all but one of the remaining fluent speakers of the NÇuu dialect have died, their descendants having shifted to Khoekhoe and Afrikaans.[2][4] The last living native speaker of N|uu, Katrina Esau, has been teaching it since 2002, albeit with limited means.[5]
| NÇng | |
|---|---|
| ÇKhomani | |
| Native to | South Africa |
| Region | historically north of the Orange River, between the Namibian border and the Vaal, as well as near the Molopo River by the southernmost point of Botswana |
| Ethnicity | 500 NÇnÇe (ÇKhomani)[1] |
Native speakers | 1 (2023)[2][3] |
Tuu
| |
| Dialects |
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| Latin script | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | ngh |
| Glottolog | nuuu1241 |
| ELP | N||ng |
| |
Classification and name
NÇng belongs to the Tuu (TaaâÇKwi) language family, with extinct ÇUngkue being its closest relative and Taa its closest (and only) living relative.
The two recent dialects are a western/northwestern one, to which the name NÇuu (NÇhuki) is sometimes restricted, and an eastern dialect from the area of Langeberg, ÇʼAu. As of 2010, most remaining speakers spoke NÇuu dialect, and this was the name NÇng appeared under when it was rediscovered. However, two spoke the ÇʼAu dialect and rejected the label 'NÇuu'.
The easiest of the various names for English speakers to pronounce is NÇuu. The letter that looks like a vertical bar (sometimes substituted with a slash) represents a dental click like the English interjection tsk! tsk! (tut! tut!) used to express pity or shame, but nasalized; "NÇuu" is pronounced like noo, with a tsk! in the middle of the [n]. The double-vertical-bar in "NÇng" is a (single) lateral click, pronounced like the tchick! used to spur on a horse; the name is pronounced like the ng of sung with this click in it.
The word nÇuu /áµÇùú/ is actually a verb, 'to speak a Bushman language', possibly from Khoekhoe. NÇhuki is a deverbal, 'a Bushman language'.[6] The people call themselves NÇÅ-Çe /áµÇÅÌÅÌ Çé/ 'NÇng people', and Westphal believes this may be the term recorded by Bleek and variously rendered in the literature as ÇNg Çʼe, Çn-Çke, ÇÅ.Çke.[note 1]
The name NÇusan is an ambiguous Khoekhoe exonym, and is used for several Tuu languages. Traill says that the ÇʼAuni call their language NÇhuki, but others have recorded their name for their language as ÇʼAuo, and both Westphal and Köhler state that NÇhuki (NÇhuci, nÇɦuki) is a variety of NÇng. It is possible the languages have gotten mixed up in the literature.[7]
Doculects
History
NÇng prospered through the 19th century, but encroaching non-ÇKwi languages and acculturation threatened it, like most other Khoisan languages. The language was mainly displaced by Afrikaans and Nama, especially after speakers started migrating to towns in the 1930s and found themselves surrounded by non-NÇng-speaking people. In 1973 their language was declared extinct, and the remaining NÇnÇe ("ÇKhomani") were evicted from the Kalahari Gemsbok National Park.
In the 1990s, linguists located 101-year-old Elsie Vaalbooi, who could still speak NÇng. Anthony Traill interviewed her in 1997. The South African San Institute soon became involved in the pursuit of information on the NÇng language, and with the help of Vaalbooi they tracked down 25 other people scattered by the eviction who were able to speak or at least understand the language. Thabo Mbeki handed over 400 km2 of land to the NÇnÇe in 1999, and 250 km2 of land within the park in 2002. Vaalbooi came up with the NÇng motto of Sa Çʼa Çainsi uinsi "We move towards a better life" for her rehabilitated people. This was also adopted as the official motto for the Northern Cape Province. At the time there were twenty elderly speakers, eight of whom lived in the Western Cape province signed over to them. As of 2007, fewer than ten were still alive in South Africa, and a few more in Botswana; none live with another speaker, and their daily languages are Khoekhoe and Tswana, respectively. In 2013 there were three speakers in the Upington area and two in Olifantshoek (ÇʼAu), speaking the western and eastern dialects, respectively. The younger generations of ÇKhomani are proud Nama speakers and have little affinity to NÇng.
Recent research on NÇng led by Amanda Miller of Cornell University has helped describe the physics of its clicks, leading to a better understanding of click sounds in general.[8]
Efforts to perpetuate the NÇng language continued in 2017[9] and in 2021.[10] The first NÇng children's book, !Qhoi n|a Tjhoi (Tortoise and Ostrich), was written by Katrina Esau, one of the two surviving speakers at the time, in May 2021.[11] In June 2021, her brother Simon Sauls died, leaving 88-year-old Katrina Esau as the last speaker of the language.[2] Esau had opened a school with her granddaughter to teach the language to children, but it was vandalized during the COVID pandemic and abandoned.[3] As of October 2025, aged 92, Esau still teaches the language.[12][4]
Phonology
NÇng has one of the more complex sound inventories of the world's languages. Most lexical words consist of a phonological foot with two moras (tone-bearing units). The first mora must start with a consonant (CV). The second mora may be a single vowel (V), a nasal consonant m or n (N), or one of a drastically reduced number of consonants plus a vowel (cV). That is, lexical roots, not counting sometimes lexicalized CV prefixes and suffixes, are typically CVcV, CVV, CVN, though there are also a few which are CV, as well as longer words of two phonological feet: CVCV, where the second C is not one of the reduced set of consonants but cannot be a click,[note 2] CVCVN, CVVCV, CVNCV, CVVCVN, CVNCVN, CVcVCV, CVVCVcV. Grammatical words tend to be CV or V.[13]
There are occasional exceptions to these patterns in ideophonic words such as /ÉùɾùkúÉúÃ-sÃ/ 'Namaqua sandgrouse' (CVcVCVCVV + suffix) and historically reduplicated words with clicks such as /ÇáḿÇà mÌ/ 'to talk'.
Vowels
Like most languages in southern Africa, NÇng has five vowel qualities. These may occur strident and nasalized. A word may have two adjacent vowels, which resemble a long vowel or diphthong.
The strident vowels are thought to have the phonation called harsh voice. They are strongly pharyngealized, and for some speakers involve low-frequency trilling that presumably involves the aryepiglottic fold. The four strident vowel qualities (there is no strident i) are rather different from the non-strident vowels, as is common when a vowel is pharyngealized.
| High front | Mid front | Low central | Mid back | High back/central | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Modal | i [iÌ] | e [eÌ] | a [ä] | o [oÌ] | u [u̽] |
| Nasal | Ä© [Ä©Ì] | ẽ [ẽÌ] | ã [äÌ] | õ [õÌ] | Å© [u̽Ì] |
| Strident[note 3] | eð´ [ÉÌ°Ì°] | að´ [ÉÌÌ°Ì°] | oð´ [ÉÌÌ°Ì°] | uð´ [ɵ̰̰] | |
| Nasal strident | (?) | ãð´ [ÉÌÌ°Ì°Ì] | õð´ [ÉÌÌ°Ì°Ì] | Å©ð´ [ɵ̰̰Ì] |
NÇng is the only Khoisan language known to have a strident front vowel, /eð´/, though this is rare, occurring in only two known words, zeqe /zá¸Ì°Ìé/ 'to fly' and ÇÊ»heqbe /áµÌÇá¸Ì°Ìβé/ 'man's loincloth'. The lack of a nasalized equivalent is thought to be an accidental gap or simply unattested due to the small number of known words.
The tone-bearing segment may be a syllabic nasal, /ÅÌ/, rather than a vowel, as in the name NÇng.
Only certain sequences of vowels may occur in a bimoraic foot, regardless of whether there is an intervening consonant. (That is, the permitted vowels are the same whether a word is CVcV or CVV.) If the first vowel is any variety (nasal, strident, etc.) of /i, e, ÅÌ/, then the second vowel must be identical. If the first vowel is /a/, then the second may be anything but /ÅÌ/. If the first vowel is /o/ or /u/, then the second may be either /a/ or a vowel of the same height: that is, oa, oo, oe; ua, uu, ui. The vowels must be both oral or both nasal; nasal vowels cannot follow a nasal stop (though they may follow nasal clicks). Only the first vowel may be strident.
Front vowels can only follow the click types Ç and Ç (the back-vowel constraint), with a single known exception, [áµÇËé] 'to go'. Front vowels and strident vowels may also not follow [Ï], whether an affricate release or a fricative, with the exception of three female kin terms where the second syllable is /Ïè/. As with the lack of strident front vowels, there are thus a small number of exceptions for these constraints with /e/, but none with /i/.
Tones
NÇng moras may carry a high or low tone, /H/ or /L/. A typical lexical word consists of two moras, and so may have a high (HH), low (LL), rising (LH), or falling (HL) tone.
Monomoraic lexical roots, such as /cú/ 'mouth', are high- rather than low-tone by a 5â1 margin. CVV and CVN roots are HH, HL, and LH with about equal frequency, with LL slightly less common. However, half of all CVcV roots are LH, making it markedly frequent, while only 5% are HL. In an additional CV foot the distribution of H and L is approximately equal; an additional CVN or CVcV foot may pattern like an initial foot, but they are too infrequent to be sure.
Consonants
The majority of NÇng consonants are clicks. It was once thought that Khoisan languages distinguish velar and uvular clicks, but recent research into NÇng, and reevaluation of the data on ÇXóõ, indicates that, for these languages at least, the distinction is one of pure clicks versus clickâplosive contours.
"(?)" marks possible accidental gaps;[14] these consonants might be expected based on their occurrence in neighboring languages with similar phonologies, but are expected to be rare, and may occur in NÇng words that have not been recorded.
What were historically initial alveolar occlusives have become pre-palatal in lexical words. Among grammatical words in the western dialect there is a single exception, ná 'I'; in the eastern dialect even that has merged, for ɲá 'I'.
Only sonorants may occur as the medial consonant of a phonological foot. /l/ is only known from three words. The oral sonorants do not occur in initial position.
| Labio- uvular | Denti- pharyngeal | Alveo- uvular | Palato- pharyngeal | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| median | lateral | |||||
| Nasal | voiced | áµÊ | áµÇ | áµÇ | áµÇ | áµÇ |
| glottalized | áµÊË | áµÇË | áµÇË | áµÇË | áµÇË | |
| aspirated | (?) | áµÌÇÊ° | áµÌÇÊ° | áµÌÇÊ° | áµÌÇÊ° | |
| Plosive | voiced | á¶¢Ê | á¶¢Ç | á¶¢Ç | á¶¢Ç | á¶¢Ç |
| tenuis | áµÊ | áµÇ | áµÇ | áµÇ | áµÇ | |
| aspirated | (?) | áµÇÊ° | áµÇÊ° | áµÇÊ° | áµÇÊ° | |
These are simple clicks. The traditional term "velaric" is something of a misnomer, for the rear articulation is further back than the velum, and indeed further back than NÇng /q/. Miller et al. prefer the term "lingual" for this airstream mechanism; they also reject the existence of click "accompaniments", using the IPA symbols to represent both points of articulation rather than solely the anterior articulation. Besides being motivated phonetically, this has the benefit of better illustrating the parallels between clicks and pulmonic consonants.
In the above rubric, the first element of the name is the forward articulation, and the second is the rear articulation.
| Labio- uvular | Denti- pharyngeal | Alveo-uvular | Palato- pharyngeal | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| central | lateral | |||||
| Plosive | tenuis | ÊÍ¡q | ÇÍ¡q | ÇÍ¡q | ÇÍ¡q | ÇÍ¡q |
| aspirated | (?) | ÇÍ¡qÊ° | ÇÍ¡qÊ° | ÇÍ¡qÊ° | ÇÍ¡qÊ° | |
| voiced | (?) | ÇÍ¡É¢ | (?) | (?) | (?) | |
| Affricate | ÊÍ¡qÏ | ÇÍ¡qÏ | ÇÍ¡qÏ | ÇÍ¡qÏ | ÇÍ¡qÏ | |
These are airstream contour consonants, which start off with a lingual (velaric) airstream mechanism and finish with a pulmonic airstream (whereas affricates are manner contour consonants, starting as plosives and finishing as fricatives). Traditionally, these were considered to be uvular clicks, because the uvular or pharyngeal closure is audible, but in fact the rear closure of all NÇng clicks is uvular or pharyngeal. (The distinction between uvular and pharyngeal is not represented here.) Effectively, in these clicks the release of the rear articulation is delayed, so that there is a double release burst, the forward (lingual) release followed by the rear (pulmonic) release.
| Labio- uvular | Denti- pharyngeal | Alveo-uvular | Palato- pharyngeal | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| central | lateral | |||||
| Plosive | ÊÍ¡qʼ | ÇÍ¡qʼ | ÇÍ¡qʼ | ÇÍ¡qʼ | ÇÍ¡qʼ | |
| Affricate | (?) | ÇÍ¡Ïʼ | ÇÍ¡Ïʼ | ÇÍ¡Ïʼ | ÇÍ¡Ïʼ | |
These differ from the previous consonants in that the second, rear release is an ejective.
