Sekele language

Sekele
Northern ǃXuun
Vasekela
Native to	Namibia, Angola
Region	Okavango and Ovamboland Territory
Language family	Kx'a ǃKung Sekele
Language codes
ISO 639-3	vaj
Glottolog	oung1238

Sekele (Vasekele, the Angolan Bantu name), or Northern ǃXuun (Northern Ju); also known by the outdated term ǃʼOǃKung (ǃʼO ǃuŋ, [ǃˀoːǃʰũ]) "Forest ǃKung" and in one source as Maligo (Sekele Maligo), is the northern variety of the !Kung (ǃXuun) dialect continuum. It was widespread in southern Angola before the civil war, but now is principally spoken among a diaspora in northern Namibia.

A variety currently being investigated is Mangetti Dune !Kung, spoken by a resettled diaspora community of 500–1000 in Namibia and South Africa in the settlements of Mangetti Dune and Omtaku (Omatako?), east of Grootfontein, Namibia, halfway to the Botswana border; and in Schmidtsdrif, west of Kimberley, South Africa.

Phonology

Mangetti Dune has clicks with four places of articulation, /ǃ ǀ ǁ ǂ/. (A reported distinction between dental lateral and postalveolar lateral clicks has not been confirmed by further research.)

These come in the same eight series as in Grootfontein !Kung, here represented with the palatal articulation:

Lingual /ǂ ǂʰ ᶢǂ ᵑǂ ᵑ̊ǂʰ/

glottalized /ᵑ̊ǂˀ/

linguo-pulmonic /ǂχ/

linguo-glottalic /ǂ͡kxʼ/

References

• Snyman, Jan Winston. 1980. The Relationship Between Angolan ǃXu and Zuǀʼõasi. In Bushman and Hottentot Linguistic Studies 1979, pp. 1–58. Ed. Snyman, J. W.. University of South Africa (UNISA), Pretoria.
• Miller, Amanda et al.. 2011. "The Phonetics of the Modernday Reflexes of the Proto‐palatal Click in Juu Languages" (Ekoka and Mangetti Dune)

External links

• !'O!Kung basic lexicon at the Global Lexicostatistical Database