| Khoe | |
|---|---|
| Central Khoisan (obsolete) | |
| Geographic distribution: |
Namibia and the Kalahari Desert |
| Linguistic classification: | Khoe–Sandawe (tentative)
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| Subdivisions: |
Khoekhoe
Tshu–Khwe
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The Khoe languages are the largest of the non-Bantu language families indigenous to southern Africa. They are often considered to be a branch of a suspected Khoisan language family, and are known as Central Khoisan in that scenario. The nearest relative of the Khoe family is the extinct and poorly attested Kwadi language of Angola. This larger group, for which pronouns and some basic vocabulary have been reconstructed, is called Kwadi–Khoe. Beyond that, the nearest relative may be the Sandawe isolate; the Sandawe pronoun system is very similar to that of Kwadi–Khoe, but there are not enough known correlations for regular sound correspondences to be worked out.
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.
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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 neighbors (or perhaps Kx'a neighbors 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.
Those Khoe who continued southwestwards retained pastoralism, and became the Khoekhoe. They mixed extensively with speakers of Tuu languages, absorbing features of their languages. The expansion of the Nama people into Namibia, and their absorption of client peoples such as the Damara and Haiǁom, took place in the 16th century and later, at about the time of European contact and colonization.
Language classifications may list one or two dozen Khoe languages. Because many are dialect clusters, there is a level of subjectivity involved in identifying them. Counting each dialect cluster as a unit results in nine languages, not counting two questionably related languages:
| ?Khoe–Sandawe |
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