ǂAakhoe (ǂĀkhoe) and Haiǁom are dialects of the Khoekhoe dialect continuum spoken mainly in Namibia by the Haiǁom people. In the sparsely available material on the subject, ǂAkhoe and Haiǁom have been considered a variant of the Khoekhoe language, as separate dialects, as virtual synonyms of a single variant, or as "a way in which some Haiǁom speak their language in the northern part of Namibia". ǂAkhoe especially is intermediate between the Khoekhoe and Kalahari branches of the Khoe language family. According to Ethnologue there were 52,000 Haiǁom speakers in 2016. and Widlock's contribution to ǂAkhoe phonology with the more general and theoretical phonological work of Peter Ladefoged (1996), ǂAkhoe can be said to have 47 phonemes. However, an in-depth phonological sketch of the language might show other results where the vowels are concerned.

Consonants

There are 34 consonants in ǂAkhoe, 20 of which are clicks produced with an ingressive airstream, and 14 of which are pulmonic consonants produced with an egressive airstream.

{| class="wikitable" style="text-align:center"

|+ Clicks

|-

!

! Dental

! Alveolar

! Palatal

! Lateral

|-

! VL unaspirated

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! VL aspirated

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! VL nasalised

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! Glottal closure

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! Aspirated/glottal

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|}

{| class="wikitable" style="text-align:center"

|+ Pulmonic consonants

|-

! colspan="2" |

! Bilabial

! Dental

! Alveolar

! Velar

! Glottal

|-

! colspan="2" | Nasal

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! rowspan="2" | Stop

! <small>plain</small>

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! <small>prenasalized</small>

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! rowspan="2" | Affricate

! <small>plain</small>

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! <small>prenasalized</small>

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! colspan="2" | Fricative

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! colspan="2" | Flap

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|}

Vowels

ǂAkhoe Haiǁom has a total of 12 vowel phonemes. These can be divided into monophthongs and diphthongs, with a further subdivision into oral and nasal pronunciation.

;Monophthongs: and .

;Diphthongs: and .

Grammar

In theory ǂAkhoe possesses free word order, with the subject–object–verb order (SOV) being the dominant preference. In keeping with the typological profile of SOV languages, adjectives, demonstratives and numerals generally precede nouns. Nouns are marked by person–gender–number (PGN) markers. Adjectives, demonstratives and numerals all agree with their head noun.

Mãa is an interrogative used freely in Haiǁom, the subject |ũ takes the suffix -ba, which is a PGN marker denoting the 3rd person masculine singular. The indirect object nde, a demonstrative, follows the noun, and is inflected in concord with the head noun.

Compound structures are highly productive in ǂAkhoe and vary widely in the combination of word categories. The possibilities include: noun+noun, noun+adverb or vice versa, noun+adjective or vice versa, adjective+adjective, adjective+adverb or vice versa, adjective+suffix, or multiple combinations of the above.

See also

  • Original People's Party of Namibia, a political party in colonial Namibia led by Theophilus Soroseb, a member of the Haiǁom and Ovambo groups

References

Bibliography

  • Haacke, W. (1988) Nama|Damara I, Guide 2: Morphology and syntax, mimeographed.
  • ,
  • Ladefoged, Peter & Maddieson, Ian (1996) The sounds of the world's languages, Oxford: Blackwell.
  • Widlok, Thomas. 2013. Hai//om. In Rainer Vossen (ed.), The Khoesan languages, 56-58, 157-165, 347-355. London & New York: Routledge.
  • Haiom in the Etosha region: a history of colonial settlement, ethnicity and Nature Conservation via Google Books
  • Undiscovered or Overlooked: The Haiom of Namibia