Tuu language of southwestern Botswana and eastern Namibia
"Taa" redirects here. For other uses, see TAA (disambiguation).
Not to be confused with Eastern ǂHuan.
Taa
ǃKhong, ǃXóõ
Taa ǂaan / Tâa ǂâã(ǃXóõ)
Native to
Botswana, Namibia
Region
Southern Ghanzi, northern Kgalagadi, western Southern and western Kweneng districts in Botswana; southern Omaheke and northeastern Hardap regions in Namibia.
Native speakers
2,500 (2011)[1]
Language family
Tuu
Taa–Lower Nossob
Taa
Dialects
West ǃXoon (Nǀuǁʼen)
ǃAma
East ǃXoon
Tsaasi–ǂHuan
Language codes
ISO 639-3
nmn
Glottolog
taaa1242
ELP
Taa
This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA.
Taa/ˈtɑː/TAH, also known as ǃXóõ/ˈkoʊ/[2]KOH (also spelled ǃKhong and ǃXoon; Taa pronunciation:[ǃ͡χɔ̃ː˦]),[3] is a Tuu language notable for its large number of phonemes, perhaps the largest in the world.[4] It is also notable for having perhaps the heaviest functional load of click consonants, with one count finding that 82% of basic vocabulary items started with a click.[5] Most speakers live in Botswana, but a few hundred live in Namibia. The people call themselves ǃXoon (pl. ǃXooŋake) or ʼNǀohan (pl. Nǀumde), depending on the dialect they speak. The Tuu languages are one of the three traditional language families that make up the Khoisan languages. In 2011, there were around 2,500 speakers of Taa.
Taa is the word for 'human being'; the local name of the language is Taa ǂaan (Tâa ǂâã), from ǂaan 'language'. ǃXoon (ǃXóõ) is an ethnonym used at opposite ends of the Taa-speaking area, but not by Taa speakers in between.[6] Most living Taa speakers are ethnic ǃXoon (plural ǃXooŋake) or 'Nǀohan (plural Nǀumde).[7]
Taa shares a number of characteristic features with West ǂʼAmkoe and Gǀui, which together are considered part of the Kalahari Basin sprachbund.[8]
^Taa at Ethnologue (19th ed., 2016)
^Alan Barnard (…) Hunters and Herders of Southern Africa, p.xxii.
^The Taa pronunciation of "ǃXóõ" can be heard in this recording, repeated from 0′16″ to 0′24″.
^Rousseau, Bryant (25 November 2016). "Click languages". The New York Times. Retrieved November 11, 2022.
^See Sands & Gunnink (2019) "Clicks on the fringes of the Kalahari Basin Area." In Clem et al. (eds), Theory and Description in African Linguistics: Selected Papers from the 47th Annual Conference on African Linguistics. Language Science Press, Berlin, pp. 703–724.
^Gertrud Boden, 2007, ǃQamtee ǀaa ǂXanya: 'the Book of Traditions' : Histories, Texts and Illustrations from the ǃXoon and 'Nǀohan People of Namibia
^DoBeS, "Taa".
^Güldemann, Tom; Fehn, Anne-Maria (2015). "The Kalahari Basin area as a "Sprachbund" before the Bantu expansion - an update". Instituts für Asien- und Afrikawissenschaften der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. Archived from the original on 2015-09-28. Retrieved 2016-04-05.
Taa /ˈtɑː/ TAH, also known as ǃXóõ /ˈkoʊ/ KOH (also spelled ǃKhong and ǃXoon; Taa pronunciation: [ǃ͡χɔ̃ː˦]), is a Tuu language notable for its large number...
The Tuu languages, or Taa–ǃKwi (Taa–ǃUi, ǃUi–Taa, Kwi) languages, are a language family consisting of two language clusters spoken in Botswana and South...
Khoisan language once spoken along the Nossob River on the border of South Africa and Botswana, near Namibia. It was closely related to the Taalanguage. There...
journal published by Schwabe (publisher) Ah (digraph), a digraph used in Taalanguage orthography Albert Heijn, a Dutch supermarket chain owned by Ahold Alkotmányvédelmi...
Khoisan Southern Khoisan (= !Kwi-Taa ~ Tuu) !Kwi Taa Ju-hoan Western Hoan Northern Khoisan (= Ju) Not all languages using clicks as phonemes are considered...
Newtown railway station, Derbyshire, England nmn, the ISO 639 code for the Taalanguage This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the title NMN...
Some languages have only a few phonemes, for example, Rotokas and Pirahã language with 11 and 10 phonemes respectively, whereas languages like Taa may...
Lower Tanana (also Tanana and/or Middle Tanana) is an endangered language spoken in Interior Alaska in the lower Tanana River villages of Minto and Nenana...
Emarginula koon, a species of sea snail The fully anglicized form of the Taalanguage Koons (disambiguation) Coon (disambiguation) This disambiguation page...
consonants (in comparison, Juǀʼhoan, spoken in Botswana and Namibia, has 48, and Taa, with roughly 4,000 speakers in Botswana, has 83). There is a series of six...
of IPA charts: The recently extinct Ubykh language had only 2 or 3 vowels but 84 consonants; the Taalanguage has 87 consonants under one analysis, 164...
classified within Afro-Asiatic, spoken in Ethiopia Tuu, or Taa-ǃKwi, two surviving languages Hadza, an isolate of Tanzania Bangime, a likely isolate of...
June 2021. "Bambara Alphabet and Pronunciation (N'ko and Latin)". An ka taa. 31 May 2019. Retrieved 28 June 2021. Bailleul, Charles. Cours pratique de...
Rai, Tara, Ta’a, Doi, Ledo) Sigi ring (= Ado, Edo, Ija, Taa) Barr and Barr recognized one language with six dialects (they also included Kulawi as a seventh...
) is a North Germanic language from the Indo-European language family spoken mainly in Norway, where it is an official language. Along with Swedish and...
Consciously devised language Endangered language – Language that is at risk of going extinct Ethnologue#Language families Extinct language – Language that no longer...
by verbalization: Yuwan Amami: an that kɨɨ=ja tree=TOP taa-sar-oo tall-VLZ-SUPP an kɨɨ=ja taa-sar-oo that tree=TOP tall-VLZ-SUPP "That tree is supposed...
marked at their beginning by the particle /taə/. /taə Q loːk you ʔɑɲcəːɲ to invite tɨw to go naː/ where /taə loːk ʔɑɲcəːɲ tɨw naː/ Q you {to invite} {to...
Pennsylvania. N'Ko Language Tutorial: Introduction PanAfrican L10n page on Manding Resources to learn Bambara, Dioula and Malinké — An ka taa Project...
(trigraph), a combination of three letters used to transcribe a sound in the Taalanguage of Botswana and Namibia This disambiguation page lists articles associated...
Inuit–Yupik–Unangan languages are a language family native to the northern portions of the North American continent, and a small part of northeastern Asia. Languages in...
Global Information
