Remember when we were discussing how to pronounce John Tvedtnes's last name (TWET-ness is the right way, incidentally), and we were talking about how hard it is to pronounce some languages? Well, here's a real tongue-twister, one of the so-called click languages that anyone who saw The Gods Must Be Crazy will be familiar with:
South African languages Tongue-tied Oct 17th 2002 | JOHANNESBURG >From The Economist print edition The imminent death of a rich African language LANGUAGES abound in South Africa: it has 11 official ones, and dozens of unofficial. But the death on October 7th of Elsie Vaalbooi, aged about 100, saddened linguists. She was one of the last speakers of n|u, a click-based dialect of the once-nomadic San people. Only a handful of her ageing relatives can still use n|u, the last known example of !Ui, a family of San languages spoken across southern Africa by hunter-gatherers, possibly for the past 30,000 years. It is now, it seems, about to expire. According to UNESCO, the UN's cultural body, half the world's 6,000 or so languages could die within a generation. Indigenous, nomadic groups, such as Australia's aborigines (with 400 languages) and southern Africa's San, have rich deposits of old languages. But they are vulnerable as traditional lifestyles die. Of an estimated 1,400 African tongues, 500 are in decline, half of them facing imminent extinction. Mrs Vaalbooi had become a campaigner for the San tongues. “I want our language to come back. I want our water, our animals, our plants,” she said as South Africa's government returned 40,000 hectares (100,000 acres) to her Khomani community in 1999. Her activism was matched by historians who say that the study of long-isolated languages will reveal the origins of human speech. Remarkably, !Ui and a cousin language in Botswana, !Xoo, have proved more complex than almost any other. Spoken languages usually employ just 20 sound units or phonemes. English-speakers have 55 of them, but !Ui-speakers use more than 140, says Nigel Crawhall of South Africa's San Institute. Study of such a complex language should reveal more about hunter-gatherer cultures. But time is short. When Mrs Vaalbooi died last week, there was almost nobody left to say “!hoi ca”, goodbye, in her mother tongue. -- Marc A. Schindler Spruce Grove, Alberta, Canada -- Gateway to the Boreal Parkland “We do not think that there is an incompatibility between words and deeds; the worst thing is to rush into action before the consequences have been properly debated…To think of the future and wait was merely another way of saying one was a coward; any idea of moderation was just an attempt to disguise one’s unmanly character; ability to understand a question from all sides meant that one was totally unfitted for action.” – Pericles about his fellow-Athenians, as quoted by Thucydides in “The Peloponessian Wars” Note: This communication represents the informal personal views of the author solely; its contents do not necessarily reflect those of the author’s employer, nor those of any organization with which the author may be associated. ///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// /// ZION LIST CHARTER: Please read it at /// /// http://www.zionsbest.com/charter.html /// ///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// ==^^=============================================================== This email was sent to: archive@jab.org EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?aaP9AU.bWix1n.YXJjaGl2 Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^^===============================================================
