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45 clicks? Madness... | ||
Tags: Rare Languages | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Spanky Senior Member Canada Joined 5954 days ago 1021 posts - 1714 votes  Studies: French | Message 1 of 4 10 June 2015 at 12:54am | IP Logged | ||
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Attached is a link to an article in today's Guardian concerning efforts, certainly doomed, to prop up the extremely threatened N|uu language - an African San language - characterized as having one of the world's largest phoneme sets:
45 clicks 30 non-click consonants 37 vowels I developed a sore and swollen tongue just thinking about such a phonetically-challenging language. Guardian article By way of contrast, I believe English (inclusive of British English, Canadian and American English and whatever it is they speak in Australia and New Zealand) has roughly 24 consonant phonemes, up to 20 vowel phonemes (21 in Australian, the extra one to account for what they slip into "Croikey"), and no clicks ('cept for my buddy Fester, who truth be told clicks sometimes). Edited by Spanky on 10 June 2015 at 12:58am 8 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Jimjam Newbie Australia Joined 3984 days ago 19 posts - 22 votes Studies: Japanese, German | Message 2 of 4 10 June 2015 at 6:18pm | IP Logged | ||
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As an Australian, I am just as confused as you are by our accent at times.
I have enough trouble with french pronunciation, so the thought of learning that language is terrifying. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6701 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 3 of 4 11 June 2015 at 11:00am | IP Logged | ||
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Quote that omniscient beast Wikipedia:
"The majority of Nǁng consonants are clicks. It was once thought that Khoisan languages distinguish velar and uvular clicks, but recent research into Nǁng, and reevaluation of the data on ǃXóõ, indicates that, for these languages at least, the distinction is one of pure clicks versus click–plosive contours." As I read that article, the reason that the number of clicks has exploded in n|uu is that the 'ordinary' consonants have been affected by different kinds of clicking. And when you count such combinations the number will of course be higher than the number of pure click types, which at least to outsiders like me would be things like tongue smacks versus uvular clicks versus lips against teeth clicks. If you count every tone in Vietnamese and combine them with the vowels (or syllables) they affect the total number will also soar. Edited by Iversen on 11 June 2015 at 11:02am 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| ennime Tetraglot Senior Member South Africa universityofbrokengl Joined 5902 days ago 397 posts - 507 votes Speaks: English, Dutch*, Esperanto, Afrikaans Studies: Xhosa, French, Korean, Portuguese, Zulu | Message 4 of 4 03 July 2015 at 10:15am | IP Logged | ||
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Actually, the 45 clicks are actually 5 basic clicks (dental, lateral, palatal, aleovelar, labial) that can be aspirated, voiced, and nasal, etc. So I think saying 45 clicks is misleading... The same in isiZulu, people say sometimes 25 different clicks, but again they are 3 basic clicks that have some variation.
I've met a few N|uu speakers from the Northern Cape in South Africa through my work a few years ago, and when asked they refer to 5 different clicks.
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