!Kung
English
[edit]Pronunciation
[edit]Proper noun
[edit]!Kung
- Alternative form of ǃKung
- 1979, Daniel Goleman, Consciousness, the Brain, States of Awareness, and Alternate Realities, Ardent Media, →ISBN, page 166:
- One of [the few hunter-gatherer cultures that remain] is the !Kung of the Kalahari Desert in Botswana, Africa (the exclamation point in !Kung represents one of four clicking sounds in their language).
- 1980, Carl Sagan, “The Backbone of Night”, in Cosmos, first edition, →ISBN, →OCLC, page 172:
- For example, the !Kung* Bushmen of the Kalahari Desert in Botswana have an explanation for the Milky Way, which at their latitude is often overhead.
[…]
*The exclamation point is a click, made by touching the tongue against the inside of the incisors, and simultaneously pronouncing the K.
- 2000, Carl N. McDaniel, John M. Gowdy, Paradise for Sale: A Parable of Nature, page 78:
- The exclamation point in !Kung is pronounced as a click and is characteristic of Khoisan languages.
References
[edit]- ^ 1992, Alan Barnard, Hunters and Herders of Southern Africa, page xxii: Finally, it may be of interest to the non-specialist that the pronunciation of clicks in ethnic group names is entirely optional when speaking a non-Khoisan language. Acceptable anglicizations may be produced either by articulating a non-click sound of approximately the same phonological position (e.g. p for ʘ, t for ǀ or ǂ, k for ǁ or ǃ), or by ignoring the click entirely and simply pronouncing the release followed by the remainder of the word. When speaking English, I myself say Kung for 'ǃKung', Gwi for 'Gǀwi', and Gana for 'Gǁana'. […] Ko for 'ǃXõ', Kam for 'ǀXam' […]
Further reading
[edit]
!Kung language on Wikipedia.Wikipedia - Ethnologue entry for !Kung, knw
