Lateral click

The lateral clicks are a family of click consonants found only in African languages. The clicking sound used by equestrians to urge on their horses is a lateral click, although it is not a speech sound in that context. Lateral clicks are found throughout southern Africa and in two languages in Tanzania. The place of articulation is not known to be contrastive in any language, and typically varies from alveolar to palatal.

Lateral click
(plain velar)
k͡ǁ
ǁ
ᵏʖ
IPA Number180
Encoding
Entity (decimal)ǁ​ʖ
Unicode (hex)U+01C1 U+0296
X-SAMPA|\|\
Braille
Audio sample
source · help
Voiced lateral click
ǁ̬
ᶢǁ
ʖ̬
ᶢʖ
Nasal lateral click
ǁ̃
ᵑǁ
ʖ̃
ᵑʖ

The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents a generic lateral click is ⟨ǁ⟩, a double vertical bar. Prior to 1989, ⟨ʖ⟩ was the IPA letter for the lateral clicks, and this is still preferred by some phoneticians, as the vertical bar may be confounded with prosody marks and, in some fonts, with a double el. Either letter may be combined with a second letter to indicate the manner of articulation, though this is commonly omitted for tenuis clicks, and increasingly a diacritic is used instead. Common lateral clicks are:

IPA IIPA IIDescription
⟨ǁ⟩ or ⟨ʖ⟩tenuis lateral click
⟨ǁʰ⟩ or ⟨ʖʰ⟩aspirated lateral click
⟨ǁ̬⟩ or ⟨ʖ̬⟩⟨ᶢǁ⟩ or ⟨ᶢʖ⟩voiced lateral click
⟨ǁ̃⟩ or ⟨ʖ̃⟩⟨ᵑǁ⟩ or ⟨ᵑʖ⟩lateral nasal click
⟨ǁ̥̃ʰ⟩ or ⟨ʖ̥̃ʰ⟩⟨ᵑ̊ǁʰ⟩ or ⟨ᵑ̊ʖʰ⟩aspirated lateral nasal click
⟨ǁ̃ˀ⟩ or ⟨ʖ̃ˀ⟩⟨ᵑǁˀ⟩ or ⟨ᵑʖˀ⟩glottalized lateral nasal click

The last is what is heard in the sound sample above, as non-native speakers tend to glottalize clicks to avoid nasalizing them.

In the orthographies of individual languages, the letters and digraphs for lateral clicks may be based on either the vertical bar symbol of the IPA, ⟨ǁ⟩, or on the Latin ⟨x⟩ of Bantu convention. Nama and most Saan languages use the former; Naro, Sandawe, and Zulu use the latter.

Features

The specific articulation of lateral clicks may vary from language to language, from dental to palatal, apical or laminal, though no contrast between such articulations has been confirmed apart from the retroflex clicks, which may have lateral release.

Features of lateral clicks:

  • The basic articulation may be voiced, nasal, aspirated, glottalized, etc.
  • The release of the forward place of articulation is a noisy, affricate-like sound in southern Africa, but abrupt in Hadza and Sandawe in East Africa.
  • Clicks may be oral or nasal, which means that the airflow is either restricted to the mouth, or passes through the nose as well.
  • They are lateral consonants, which means they are produced by releasing the airstream at the side of the tongue, rather than in the middle. Some speakers pronounce them on one side of the mouth, some on both.
  • The airstream mechanism is lingual ingressive (also known as velaric ingressive), which means a pocket of air trapped between two closures is rarefied by a "sucking" action of the tongue, rather than being moved by the glottis or the lungs/diaphragm. The release of the forward closure produces the "click" sound. Voiced and nasal clicks have a simultaneous pulmonic egressive airstream.

Regarding Khoekhoe, Tindall notes that European learners almost invariably pronounce these sounds as simple laterals, by placing the tongue against the side teeth, and that this articulation is "harsh and foreign to the native ear". The Namaqua instead cover the whole of the palate with the tongue, and produce the sound "as far back in the palate as possible".[1]

Occurrence

English does not have a lateral click (or any click consonant, for that matter) as a phoneme, but a plain lateral click does occur as an interjection, usually written tchick! or tchek! (and often reduplicated tchick-tchick!), used to urge a horse to move.

LanguageWordIPAMeaningNotes
ǃKungnǁan[ᵑǁàŋ] = [ʖ̃àŋ]'marama bean'
Hadza exekeke[ʔeǁekeke] = [ʔeʖekeke]'to listen'
naxhi[naǁʰi] = [naʖʰi]'to crowd'
konxa[koᵑǁa] = [koʖ̃a]'to be a pair'
slaxxa[ɬaᵑǁˀa] = [ɬaʖ̃ˀa]'a split, fork'
XhosaisiXhosa[isiǁʰosa] = [isiʖʰosa]'Xhosa language'Contrasts tenuis, murmured, aspirated, and nasal lateral clicks.
!Xóõǁnáã[ᵑǁɑ́ɑ̃] = [ʖ̃ɑ́ɑ̃]'grewia berry'
Zuluxoxa[ǁɔ́ːǁa] = [ʖɔ́ːʖa]'to converse'
gollark: The pyramids do not actually exist. The government just hypnotizes people into believing they do after they leave the area.
gollark: They need it to not be too wild or people might look into it more.
gollark: I mean, they are very *large* sandstone triangles.
gollark: Do those exist? Can you *guarantee* such properties in a cave without heating or anything?
gollark: I don't like caves, they're generally small, cold and wet.

See also
  • Fricated palatal click (described as having a lateral release)
  • Retroflex click (has a fricated lateral release)

References
  1. Tindal (1858) A grammar and vocabulary of the Namaqua-Hottentot language
  • Pullum, Geoffrey K.; Ladusaw, William A. (1996). Phonetic Symbol Guide. University of Chicago Press. p. 178.
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