Re: Xhosa?

At 9:44 pm -0400 24/9/01, Herman Miller wrote:
>On Mon, 24 Sep 2001 18:48:37 EDT, Colin Halverson <CHalvrson@...>
>wrote:
>
>>It's me yet again.  No answers but a tonne of questions-
>>I was wondering if anyone knows how many/which letters stand for/how to say
>>the clicks or clucks of Xhosa (or any other language for that matter).  Is
>>there an IPA or whatever for these kind of sounds?  Does anyone have a
>>conlang that involves clicks/clucks?
>
>In Xhosa and Zulu, the click letters are <c>, <q>, and <x>: <c> is dental,
><q> is alveolar (or maybe retroflex?), and <x> is lateral. They may also be
>aspirated, voiced, or nasalized, so you get combinations like the <xh> in
>"Xhosa" (aspirated lateral click). I've used clicks in a couple of old
>languages (really language sketches), Nikta (N!tet'ak'!tùl) and Qiira
>Triicha (the <q> of "Qiira" is a low-pitched alveolar click, and the
>language also has a higher-pitched alveolar click written <x>!).
>
Yes <q> is retroflex.  The full set of Zulu clicks with the Zulu spelling are:
                       DENTAL  RETROFLEX  LATERAL
  voiceless aspirated:   ch       qh        xh
voiceless unaspirated:    c        q         x
               voiced:   gc       gq        gx
            nasalized:   nc       nq        nx

Xhosa has all these and more; it distinguished voiceless & voiced nasal
clicks.  The last row above are the unvoiced ones; the voiced nasal clicks
are written:
                        ngc      ngq        ngx

As if that weren't enough, Xhosa also has unvoiced clicks after the velar
nasal [N]; they are written:
                        nkc      nkq        nkx

The <k> is not, of course, pronounced in the last three; it merely
signifies that the preceeding <n> is a velar nasal and that the click is
unvoiced.

Ray.



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A mind which thinks at its own expense
will always interfere with language.
                     [J.G. Hamann 1760]
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