Altyd ’n snaakse woordjie tussen-in: Nama click consonants in post-shift Namaqualand Afrikaans

Abstract

Several regional varieties of Coloured Afrikaans in the Northern Cape retain lexical items in the aftermath of shift from Khoekhoe-branch languages, predominantly Nama and †Kora. These loaned lexical items are pronounced using click consonants even by entirely monolingual speakers of Afrikaans, implying substrate interference with the Afrikaans phonetic inventory. Unfortunately, very little formal linguistic attention has been paid to these click consonants, and only limited data on their phonetic and phonological properties are available. Documentation of Nama click consonants in monolingual speakers of L1 Namaqualand Afrikaans reveals that the post-shift click inventory is extremely variable, with speakers often employing different click types in different tokens of the same word. A brief phonetic sketch of these loaned click consonants, followed by preliminary phonological and sociohistorical discussion, are compared with similar outcomes from click loan events in the southwestern NTU languages of and Namibia and Botswana. Improved linguistic documentation of click consonants in post-shift speech communities in South Africa is urgently advised.