The Sounds of N|uu
This web page provides a list of words that illustrate
the contrastive
sounds in the endangered southern African language N|uu. N|uu is the
only surviving member of the !Ui branch of the Tuu family (previously
called "Southern Khoesan"). At this time (December 2007), N|uu is still spoken
by about 10 people in the Northern Cape Province of South Africa.
Recordings were made with Ouma Katrina Esau (KE), Ouma Anna
Kassie (AK), Ouma Hanna Koper (JK), Ouma |Una Rooi (UR) and Ouma Griet
Seekoei (GS), who speak the Western dialect, and Ouma Hannie Koerant
(HK) and Oupa Andries Olyn (AO), who speak the Eastern dialect,
but most
examples on this page are from a single speaker (KE) in order to
facilitate the comparison of different segments. We are grateful to the
South African San Institute (SASI), particularly Grace Humphreys and
Nigel Crawhall, for their part in arranging and facilitating our visits
to South Africa, and to our consultants and translators for their
patience and good humor during our sometimes tedious recording sessions. This
list is taken from Appendix A of:
Miller, A.L., Brugman,
J.,
Sands, B., Namaseb, L., Exter, M., and Collins, C. (2007). Differences
in Airstream and Posterior Place of Articulation among N|uu Clicks.
Submited to the Journal
of the International Phonetic Association, March 2007.
Recordings were made by various subsets of the authors during multiple
field trips to Upington, South Africa between 2003 and 2006. Several of
these trips were supported by a grant from the National Science
Foundation, "Collaborative Research: Descriptive and Theoretical
Studies of N|u" (PIs Miller and Collins #0236735, and PI Sands
#0236795). Any opinions, findings and conclusions or
recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and
do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science
Foundation.
In the following tables, columns represent: 1) phonemes,
2) narrow transcriptions,
3) example words in transcription, 4) example words in orthography
(Namaseb et al. 2005;
Collins and Namaseb 2007) and 5) English glosses. Click on the ear
icons to
hear the associated sound files. Note that transcriptions reflect
the morphological word, and there are a few cases where
morphological and prosodic word boundaries do not coincide. Note
also that N|uu is a tone language, but that tone has not been
transcribed in these examples.
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