Khoi languages
| Khoe | |
|---|---|
| Central Khoisan (obsolete) | |
| Geographic distribution |
Namibia and the Kalahari Desert |
| Linguistic classification | Khoe–Sandawe (tentative)
|
| Subdivisions |
|
| Glottolog | khoe1240 |
The Khoe languages are the largest of the non-Bantu language families indigenous to southern Africa. They were once considered to be a branch of a Khoisan language family, and were known as Central Khoisan in that scenario. Though Khoisan is now rejected as a family, the name is retained as a term of convenience.
The most numerous and only well known Khoe language is Nama of Namibia, also known as Khoekhoegowab or Hottentot. The rest of the family is found predominantly in the Kalahari Desert of Botswana.
The Khoe languages were the first Khoisan languages known to European colonists and are famous for their clicks, though these are not as extensive as in other Khoisan language families. There are two primary branches of the family, Khoekhoe of Namibia and South Africa, and Tshu–Khwe of Botswana and Zimbabwe. Except for Nama, they are under pressure from national or regional languages such as Tswana.
Tom Güldemann believes agro-pastoralist people speaking the Khoe–Kwadi proto-language entered modern-day Botswana about 2000 years ago from the northeast (that is, in the direction of the modern Sandawe), where they had likely acquired agriculture from the expanding Bantu, at a time when the Kalahari was more amenable to agriculture. The ancestors of the Kwadi (and perhaps Damara) continued west, whereas those who settled in the Kalahari absorbed speakers of Juu languages. Thus the Khoe family proper has a Juu influence. These immigrants were ancestral to the north-eastern Kalahari peoples (Eastern Tshu–Khwe branch linguistically), whereas Juu neighbours (or perhaps Kx'a neighbours more generally) to the southwest who shifted to Khoe were ancestral to the Western Tshu–Khwe branch.
Later desiccation of the Kalahari led to the adoption of a hunter-gatherer economy and preserved the Kalahari peoples from absorption by the agricultural Bantu when they spread south.
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