ǀXam language

ǀXam
Region	South Africa, Lesotho
Extinct	20th century
Language family	Tuu ǃKwi ǀXam
Language codes
ISO 639-3	xam
Glottolog	xamm1241

ǀXam (/Kham) (Pronunciation of 'ǀXam'.wav [ǀ͡xam], English pronunciation /ˈkɑːm/) is an extinct Khoisan language of South Africa formerly spoken by the ǀXam-ka-ǃkʼe people of South Africa. It is part of the ǃUi branch of the Tuu languages and closely related to the moribund Nǁng language. Much of the scholarly work on ǀXam was performed by Wilhelm Bleek, a German linguist of the 19th century, who studied a variety of ǀXam spoken at Achterveld, and (with Lucy Lloyd) another spoken at Strandberg and Katkop while working with ǁKábbo, Diäǃkwā̹̃ī̹̃n, |aǃuŋta, !kwéite̥n ta ||kēn, ǀhaŋǂkassʼō, and other speakers. The surviving corpus of ǀXam comes from the stories told by and vocabulary recorded from these individuals in the Bleek and Lloyd Collection.

Name

The pipe at the beginning of the name "ǀXam" represents a dental click, like the English interjection tsk, tsk! used to express pity or shame. The ⟨x⟩ denotes a voiceless velar fricative click accompaniment.

Compared to other Khoisan languages, there is little variation in rendering the name though it is sometimes seen with the simple orthographic variant ǀKham, as well as a different grammatical form, ǀKhuai.

Phonology

Consonants

Compared to other Tuu languages like Taa, ǀXam has a more restricted inventory of consonants particularly the clicks, where there are only 8 series of click accompaniments, far fewer than East !Xoon Taa's 18. A preliminary consonant inventory of ǀXam, including egressive stops, fricatives, and affricates as well as ingressive clicks, is listed below.

ǀXam consonants
		Egressive					Ingressive
		Labial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal	Labial	Dental	Alveolar	Lateral	Palatal
Simple Stops	tenuis	(p)	t		k	ʔ	ʘ	ǀ	ǁ	ǃ	ǂ
	voiced	b	d		ɡ		gʘ	gǀ	gǁ	gǃ	gǂ
Affricates	glottalized		tʼ~t͡sʼ		k͡x'		ʘ'	ǀ'	ǁ'	ǃ'	ǂ'
	aspirated		t͡sʰ		k͡x		ʘʰ	ǀʰ	ǁʰ	ǃʰ	ǂʰ
Clusters	tenuis+/x/		tx~t͡sx				ʘ͡x	ǀ͡x	ǁ͡x	ǃ͡x	ǂ͡x
	tenuis+/k'/~/kx'/						ʘ͡kx'	ǀ͡kx'	ǁ͡kx'	ǃ͡kx'	ǂ͡kx'
	tenuis+/kh/~/kx/						ʘ͡kʰ	ǀ͡kʰ	ǁ͡kʰ	ǃ͡kʰ	ǂ͡kʰ
Nasal	voiced	m	n		ŋ		ᵑʘ	ᵑǀ	ᵑǁ	ᵑǃ	ᵑǂ
Fricative	voiceless		s		x	h
Sonorant	voiced	w	r~l	j

Mythological characters

Bleek notes that particular animal figures in ǀXam mythology have distinctive speech patterns, including ingressive sounds and changes in click type. For example, the Tortoise speaks with predominantly bilabial clicks, the Ichneumon uses palatal and dental click-sibilant clusters, and the Jackal is even said to use an unusual lateralised bilabial click. The Moon, Hare and Anteater even use an "unpronounceable" click in place of all clicks save the bilabial. Other changes noted include the Blue Crane's speech, who ends the first syllable of almost every word with a /t/.

Motto of South Africa

ǀXam was used for the South African motto on the coat of arms adopted on 27 April 2000:

ǃke e: ǀxarra ǁke

The intended meaning is Diverse people unite or, on a collective scale, Unity in Diversity. The word-for-word translation is people who are different meet. However, it is not known if that phrase would have been idiomatic in ǀXam. Because it is extinct, ǀXam is not one of the eleven official languages of South Africa.

External links

• Bleek and Lloyd Archive of ǀxam and ǃkun texts online
• A crowdsourcing project to transcribe the Bleek and Lloyd Collection
• South African coat of arms