Khoemana

ǃOrakobab, or Khoemana, also known as Korana, ǃOra, or Griqua, is a moribund Khoe language of South Africa.

Names

"Khoemana" (from khoe 'person' + mana 'language') is more commonly known as either Korana /kɒˈrɑːnə/ korr-AH-nə (also ǃOrakobab, ǃOra, Kora, Koraqua) or Griqua (also Gri [xri], Xri, Xiri, Xirikwa). The name 'Korana' reflects the endonym ǃOra [ǃoɾa] or ǃGora [gǃoɾa], referring to the ǃOra people. Sometimes ǃOra is also known as Cape Khoe or Cape Hottentot, though the latter has become considered derogatory. The various names are often treated as different languages (called South Khoekhoe when taken together), but they do not correspond to any actual dialect distinctions, and speakers may use "Korana" and "Griqua" interchangeably. Both names are also used more broadly, for example for the Griqua people. There exist (or existed) several dialects of Khoemana, but the details are unknown.

Documentation

Robust ǃOrakobab (before more recent language attrition) is principally recorded in an 1879 notebook by Lucy Lloyd, which contains five short stories; some additional work was done in Ponelis (1975). As of 2009, the EuroBABEL project is searching for remaining speakers.

History

The people and their language first began to attract scholarly attention in the 1660s, coinciding with Dutch colonial efforts in the Cape of Good Hope and the resulting armed conflicts. At the time, ǃOrakobab was widely spoken throughout the coastal regions of South Africa. After years of attrition during the colonial era to the 1930s, and under apartheid from 1948 to 1994, the language has all but vanished. Currently, speakers of ǃOrakobab are not only scarce but scattered, due to forced migrations during the apartheid era. This has rendered the language particularly vulnerable.

Population

Reports as to the number of ǃOrakobab speakers are contradictory, but it is clear that it is nearly extinct. It was thought to be extinct until the discovery of four elderly speakers around Bloemfontein and Kimberley. A 2009 report by Don Killian of the University of Helsinki estimated that there were less than 30 speakers at the time. Matthias Brenzinger reported in 2012 that one possible speaker remained, but that she refused to speak the language. The discrepancies could be because the language has multiple dialects and goes by several names, with scholars not always referring to the same population. ǃOrakobab is listed as "critically endangered" in UNESCO's Language Atlas. The loss of this endangered language would have a significant impact on the heritage and culture of ǃOrakobab speakers.

Phonology

ǃOrakobab (Khoemana) is closely related to Khoekhoe, and the sound systems are broadly similar.

Vowels

In Korana, [oe] and [oa] can be pronounced as [we] and [wa].

Consonants

The strongly aspirated Khoekhoe affricates are simply aspirated plosives [tʰ,kʰ] in ǃOrakobab. However, ǃOrakobab has an ejective velar affricate, /kxʼʔ/, which is not found in Khoekhoe, and a corresponding series of clicks, /ǀ͡xʼǁ͡xʼǃ͡xʼǂ͡xʼ/. Beach (1938) reported that the Khoekhoe of the time had a velar lateral ejective affricate, [k͡ʟ̝̊ʼ], a common realisation or allophone of /kxʼ/ in languages with clicks, and it might be expected that this is true for ǃOrakobab as well. In addition, about half of all lexical words in ǃOrakobab began with a click, compared to a quarter in Khoekhoe.

• The phoneme [k] can be realized as /c/ before [e] or [i].
• An intervocalic [p] and [b] are sometimes realized as /β/.
• [s] is stated to be alveolar-postalveolar when not followed by a close front vowel [i], [ĩ], or [e].
• The aspirated phoneme [tʰ] is realized as an affricate sound /ts/ when followed by a close front vowel [i], [ĩ], or [e].
• The aspirated sound [kʰ] can sometimes be realized as [kx]. Some Griqua speakers may pronounce [kʰ] as [kʼ].
• The [tsʼ] sound only seldom occurs.
• [m] and [n] can occur syllabically as [m̩] and [n̩].
• The trilled [r] can also be realized as a flapped [ɾ] in some speech.
• Voicing can be very weak in Khoemana in casual speech, so voiced plosives can be hard to distinguish from voiceless plosives.

Clicks

There are four tones in ǃOrakobab: high (notated with an acute accent), rising (notated with a caron), mid (no accent), and falling (notated with a circumflex).

Notes

Further reading

• Besten, Michael Paul (2006). (PDF) (Thesis). Faculty of Arts, Leiden University.
• Halford, Samuel James (1949). The Griquas of Griqualand: A Historical Narrative of the Griqua People, Their Rise, Progress and Decline. Juta. OCLC .
• Killian, Don (2008). Khoemana and the Griqua (Thesis). hdl:.
• Jenkins, Trefor (1975). "The Griqua of Campbell, Cape Province, South Africa". American Journal of Physical Anthropology. 43 (1). Wiley Online Library: 71–78. doi:. PMID .
• Robertshaw, PT (1978). "The origin of pastoralism in the Cape". South African Historical Journal. 10. Taylor & Francis: 117–133. doi:.
• The Rosetta Project (2010). .
• Waldman, Linda (2006). "Klaar Gesnap As Kleurling: The Attempted Making and Remaking of the Griqua People". African Studies. 65 (2). Routledge: 175–200. doi:. S2CID .
• Voßen, Rainer (1997). Die Khoe-Sprachen: Ein Beitrag zur Erforschung der Sprachgeschichte Afrikas. (Quellen zur Khoisan-Forschung/Research in Khoisan Studies, 12.). Köln: Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe. pp. 92–94.
• Maingard, L.F. 1962. Korana Folktales. Grammar and Texts. Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press

External links

• at the Wayback Machine (archive index)
• ELAR archive of