Tshwa language

Tsoa or Tshwa, also known as Kua and Hiechware, is an East Kalahari Khoe dialect cluster spoken by several thousand people in Botswana and Zimbabwe.

"Kua" redirects here. For other uses, see KUA (disambiguation).
Tsoa
Kua
Hiechware
Native toBotswana, Zimbabwe
Native speakers
2,000 (2013)[1]
Khoe
  • Kalahari (Tshu–Khwe)
    • East
      • Tsoa
Dialects
  • Hiechware
  • Kua
  • Cire Cire
Official status
Official language in
 Zimbabwe (as 'Khoisan')
Language codes
ISO 639-3Either:
hio – Tsoa
tyu – Kua
Glottologtshw1239[2]

One of the dialects is Tjwao (formerly Tshwao), the only Khoisan language in Zimbabwe, where "Koisan" is a language officially recognised in the constitution.

Dialects

Tsoa–Kua is a dialect cluster, which is still poorly studied but seems to include:

  • Tsoa, also known as Hiechware and as various other combinations of Hio-, Hie-, Hai- + Chwa, Tshwa, Chuwau, Tshuwau + -re, -ri; also as Sarwa, Sesarwa (the Tswana name), Gǁabake-Ntshori, Tati, and Kwe-Etshori Kwee. Zimbabwean Tshwao apparently belongs here.
  • Kua, also spelled Cua and Tyhua. That is, both Tsoa and Kua may be pronounced something like [tʃwa], and it's not clear that they are distinct dialects.
  • Cire Cire [tʃire tʃire], spoken in the area around Nata in Botswana.

Phonology

The Cire-cire (not cited) dialect has the following consonant inventory:

Consonant phonemes of the Cire-cire dialect (not cited)
Bilabial Dental Alveolar Lateral Post-
alveolar		 Velar Uvular Glottal
Nasal click    ᵑǀ    (ᵑǃ)    ᵑǁ    (ᵑǂ)
Oral click ǀ ᶢǀ ǀʰ (ǃ ᶢǃ ǃʰ) ǁ ᶢǁ ǁʰ (ǂ ᶢǂ ǂʰ)
Glottalized click    ǀˀ    ǁˀ
Affricate click    (ǀqχ)    (ǁqχ)
Nasal stop    m    n
Oral stop p   b t   d k   ɡ q    ʔ   
Affricate    dz tʃ   dʒ
Fricative s   z ʃ    χ   
Approximant    l

The clicks have a very uneven distribution: Only a dozen words begin with one of the palatal clicks (ǂ), and these are replaced by dental clicks (ǀ) among younger speakers. Only half a dozen words start with one of the alveolar clicks (ǃ), and half a dozen more with one of the affricated clicks. These rather marginal sounds are placed in parentheses in the chart.

Tsoa has the five vowels /a e i o u/. It is not clear if Tsoa has long vowels, or simply sequences of identical vowels /aa ee ii oo uu/.

There are two tones, high and low, plus a few cases of mid tone.

In the northern dialect of Kua, like all other East Kalahari Khoe languages, the palatal click series has become palatal stops. Southern Kua has retained the palatal clicks, but the dental stops have palatalized, as they have in Gǀui and ǂʼAmkoe. Thus northern Kua has /ɟua/ 'ash' and /d̪u/ 'eland', whereas southern Kua has ᶢǂua 'ash' and /d̪ʲu/ (or perhaps /ɟu/) 'eland'.[3]

gollark: ... *how* does this have external non-HTTP networking?
gollark: I mean, "really fast" compared to how it runs now.
gollark: Hey, maybe this could be really fast with some sort of in-memory filesystem.
gollark: gcc ran very slow initially but pretty fast after I ran it again, presumably because of it warming the filesystem caches or something.
gollark: Its virtualized filesystem is veeery slow, I mean.

References
  1. "Tsoa". Ethnologue. Retrieved 2018-05-22.
  2. Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). "Tshwa Khoe". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
  3. Gerlach, Linda (2015) "Phonetic and phonological description of the Nǃaqriaxe variety of ǂʼAmkoe and the impact of language contact". PhD dissertation, Humboldt University, Berlin

Bibliography

Vossen, Rainer (ed.). 2013a. The Khoesan Languages. London & New York: Routledge.


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