Nama language

Nàmá, previously called Hottentot, is the most populous and widespread of the Khoisan languages. It belongs to the Khoe language family, and is spoken in Namibia, Botswana, and South Africa by the Namaqua, Damara, and Haiǁom, as well as smaller ethnic groups such as the ǂKhomani. The name for Nama speakers, Khoekhoen, is from the Nama word khoe "person", with reduplication and the suffix -n to indicate the plural. According to Ethnologue, there were 250,000 speakers as of 1998.

Classification

Nama is in the Khoe family, which is part of a hypothetical Khoisan phylum.

Geographic distribution

Nama has 250,000 speakers in Namibia, South Africa, and (a few in) Botswana.

Dialects

Sounds

Vowels

There are 5 vowel qualities, found as oral and nasal . These may be long or short, and there are several sequences or diphthongs: and nasal . ( is phonemically .)

Tones

Nama has three tones, , which may occur on vowels and nasal stops. The mid tone is not written.

Consonants

Nama has 31 consonants: 20 clicks and a simple set of 11 non-clicks.

Non-clicks

	bilabial	alveolar	velar	glottal
stop	~	~
affricate
fricative
nasal

Between vowels, is pronounced and is pronounced .

Clicks

The clicks are doubly articulated consonants. Each click consists of one of four primary articulations or "influxes" and one of five secondary articulation or "effluxes". The combination of influxes and effluxes results in 20 phonemes.

The aspirated clicks are often pronounced as affricates. That is, may be pronounced anywhere from to .

The voiceless nasal accompaniment is difficult to hear when not between vowels, so to foreign ears it may sound like a longer but less raspy version of the aspirated accompaniment.

There have been several orthographies used for Nama, with sometimes conflicting differences in the representation of the clicks. In A Khoekhoegowab dictionary (Haacke 2000) the standartized version of Nama orthography has been used.

accompaniment	affricated clicks		'sharp' clicks		standardized orthography (with )
accompaniment	dental clicks	lateral clicks	alveolar clicks	palatal clicks	standardized orthography (with )
Tenuis
Aspirated
Nasal
Voiceless nasal with delayed aspiration
Tenuis with glottal stop

Grammar

Nama has a Subject Object Verb word order.

Example

English Translation

The lion is king of all the beasts because he is very strong, thick of chest, slim of waist, and runs fast.

Every morning, the young lion would go out into the forest and compare his strength with the other beasts. And every day he would return the victor. This news was heard and known throughout the animal world: that the lion was king of the beasts. Every day that he would return victorious, his mother would praise him, "Son of mine! Thick of neck! Thick of chest! He-man!"

But one morning, when having got up the young lion was stretching, she praised him, "Thick of chest! Thick of neck! Lion-armed! Slim of waist!," finished praising him and said, "I truly believe that you are strongest of all the beasts. Every day you go out into the forest and return, and show me that you are truly king of the beasts. But, my son, one day you will go out into the forest. And while you are out walking around in the forest, you will see a little thing which walks straight, its head sitting on its shoulders. And, Son of mine! Thick of chest! Thick of neck! Slim of waist!, the day you meet that little thing, on that day the sun will set while you have not returned. The name of that little thing is called 'man'.

Trivia

Nama is a national language in Namibia, and doctorates in the study of the language can be earned at the University of Namibia.
In Namibia and South Africa, radio programs are broadcast in Nama.
There is a dictionary of the Nama language available.

Bibliography

Beach, Douglas M. 1938. The phonetics of the Hottentot language. Cambridge: Heffer.

Haacke, Wilfrid. 1976. A Nama grammar: the noun-phrase. MA thesis. University of Cape Town.

Haacke, Wilfrid H. G. 1977. The so-called "personal pronoun" in Nama. In Traill, Anthony, ed., Khoisan linguistic studies 3, 43-62. Communications 6. Johannesburg: African Studies Institute, University of the Witwatersrand.

Haacke, Wilfrid. 1978. Subject deposition in Nama. MA thesis. University of Essex. Colchester (UK).

Haacke, Wilfrid. 1992. Compound noun phrases in Nama. In Derek F. Gowlett, ed., African linguistic contributions (Festschrift Ernst Westphal), 189-194. Pretoria: Via Afrika.

Haacke, Wilfrid. 1992. Dislocated noun phrases in Khoekhoe (Nama/Damara): further evidence for the sentential hypothesis. Afrikanistische Arbeitspapiere, 29, 149-162.

Haacke, Wilfrid. 1995. Instances of incorporation and compounding in Khoekhoegowab (Nama/Damara). In Anthony Traill, Rainer Vossen and Marguerite Anne Megan Biesele, eds., The complete linguist: papers in memory of Patrick J. Dickens, 339-361. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag.

Haacke, Wilfrid, Eliphas Eiseb and Levi Namaseb. 1997. Internal and external relations of Khoekhoe dialects: a preliminary survey. In Wilfrid Haacke & Edward D. Elderkin, eds., Namibian languages: reports and papers, 125-209. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag for the University of Namibia.

Haacke, Wilfrid. 1999. The tonology of Khoekhoe (Nama/Damara). Quellen zur Khoisan-Forschung/Research in Khoisan studies, Bd 16. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag.

Haacke, Wilfrid H.G. & Eiseb, Eliphas (2002) A Khoekhoegowab dictionary with an English-Khoekhoegowab index. Windhoek : Gamsberg Macmillan. ISBN 9991604014

Hagman, Roy S.. 1977. Nama Hottentot grammar. Language science monographs, v 15. Bloomington: Indiana University.

Hahn, Theophilus. 1870. Die Sprache der Nama, nebst einem Anhang enthaltend Sprachproben aus dem Munde des Volkes. Redigierte Ausgabe eine Dissertation mit einem Anhang über Mythen der Khoi-khoin nebst Übersetzung und Wörterverzeichnis. Leipzig: Johann Ambrosius Barth.

External links

Khoisan languages | Languages of Botswana | Languages of Namibia | Languages of South Africa

Nama (Sprache) | 나마어 | Nama (taal) | Język nama

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