ǁXegwi language
language
ǁXegwi or ǁXʼegwi (pronounced ZEH-gwee; ǁXegwi: giǁkxi꞉gwi), also known as Batwa, is an extinct ǃKwi language spoken at Lake Chrissie in South Africa, near the Swazi border. The last known speaker, Jopi Mabinda (also Jobi Mabinda), was murdered in 1988. However, a reporter for the South African newspaper Mail & Guardian reports that ǁXʼegwi may still have been spoken in the Chrissiesmeer district in 2011.
The ǁXʼegwi name for their language has been spelled giǁkwi꞉gwi or kiǁkwi꞉gwi. Their name for themselves, Tlouʼeʼthle 'people of rock and water', has been transcribed tlou tle and kxlou-kxle, presumably renderings of [k͡𝼄ouk͡𝼄e]. The Nguni (Zulu and Swazi) called them (a)batwa, amaNkqeshe and amaNgqwigqwi; the Sotho called them Baroa~Barwa.
Phonology
Tone
From Köhler's material, it appears that ǁXʼegwi had a four-tone inventory.
Consonants
ǁXʼegwi lost the abrupt clicks (the various manners of ǂ and ǃ) found in its relatives. It reacquired ǃ from Nguni Bantu languages, but clicks remained relatively infrequent, compared to other Tuu languages. It also had a series of uvular plosives not found in other Tuu languages.
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This entry incorporates text from “ǁXegwi language” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.