The Khoesan Languages

doi:10.1017/CBO9780511486692.003

2 - The Khoesan Languages

from Part I - The main language groupings

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009

A. Traill

Edited by

Rajend Mesthrie

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A. Traill: Affiliation:
Department of Linguistics, University of the Witwatersrand
Rajend Mesthrie: Affiliation:
University of Cape Town

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Summary

INTRODUCTION

The sociolinguistic story of the South African Khoesan languages is one of language death (Dorian 1989), and finds its place in the discussion of language death in Africa (Dimendaal 1989, Brenzinger 1992, Brenzinger et al. 1991). In the case of many of the Cape Khoekhoe languages or dialects, historical and other records have been rich enough to permit some quite specific sociolinguistic reconstructions of the circumstances attending their death. However, there is not much of a sociolinguistic texture that can illuminate the well-known historical record of the holocaust that finally obliterated the speakers of the /Xam Bushman dialects in the space of forty-odd years, between 1875, when W. H. I. Bleek and Lucy Lloyd worked with the rich (albeit threatened) language, and about 1911, when Dorothea Bleek visited the last few speakers in Prieska and Kenhardt. Although a contributing factor to the death of /Xam was undoubtedly the extermination of many of its speakers, it is generally possible only to speculate about other conditions that destroyed the language. This applies to the other Bushman languages of South Africa, with the added difficulty that many of them were so inadequately documented that we cannot even be sure about their exact linguistic status.

THE KHOESAN LANGUAGES OF SOUTHERN AFRICA

Thanks to the extensive surveys of Köhler (1981), Westphal (1971) and Winter (1981), we have detailed surveys of most of the Khoesan languages that are extinct or extant.

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Type: Chapter
Information: Language in South Africa , pp. 27 - 49

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511486692.003 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2002

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