Korana language

Korana, or ǃOra, is a moribund Khoe language of South Africa. An ethnic Korana population (also called Griqua) of 10,000 live in South Africa, and perhaps Botswana, with perhaps half a dozen elderly speakers as of 2008.

ǃOra is related to Nama, and the sound systems are broadly similar. However, ǃOra has an ejective velar affricate, /kxʼ/, which is not found in Nama, both as a pulmonic consonant and as a click accompaniment. In addition, about half of all lexical words in ǃOra began with a click, compared to a quarter in Nama.

ǃOra is principally recorded in a notebook by Carl Meinhof from 1879 which contains five short stories; some addition work was done in Ponelis (1975). As of 2009, EuroBABEL project is searching for remaining speakers.

References

• Ponelis, F. A. (1975). "!Ora clicks: problems and speculations." Bushman and Hottentot linguistic studies, pp 51–60. ed. Anthony Traill. Communications from the African Studies Institute, no 2. University of the Witwatersrand. Johannesburg.

External links

• ǃKorana grammar at Cornell at the Wayback Machine
• Ethnologue Report for Korana