Episode 5 Click Languages

Language Families of the World

Dr John McWhorter

Film Review

This is my favorite lecture so far because I’ve always been fascinated by click languages. All evidence suggests language most likely originated in Africa. Click languages are mainly spoken by the Kohisan (pastoralists) and the Sun (bushmen). There are a few dozen other languages (including the Bauntu languages Zulu and Xhosa) in southern Africa that use clicks. McWhorter believes the clicks may be a relatively recent innovation, although one indigenous Australian language also uses clicks. This would suggest they developed before indigenous Australians left Africa 70,000 years ago. There are two click languages outside of southern Africa (in Tanzania). This suggests they were once more widely distributed than they are at present.

There are five different kinds clicks and they have different meaning depending on whether they’re made on inhalation or exhalation. Click languages have the most sounds of any language on earth: on average 43 clicks and 44 consonants, in addition to roughly 16 vowel sounds. In contrast English has 43 sounds in total. People who speak a click language develop a scar in their throat, even if they learn it as a second language.

The main click languages belong to three families: northern (which, like Chinese, has no noun or verb suffixes), central (has genders like Indo-European languages) and southern.

Film can be viewed free with a library card on Kanopy.

https://www.kanopy.com/en/pukeariki/watch/video/6120000/6120010