Talk:Khoisan languages

message: I'm pretty sure the article is wrong on claiming that Khoisan languages are only spoken in the Kalahari. There are Nama-speakers living in the Central Namib, for instance, and Damaraland (where they speak Damara, a very similar language), and I'm pretty certain there are Khoisan speakers in South Africa's Namaqualand, which is by no means part of the Kalahari.
I've changed the article to reflect this, based on Barnard (1988). Col pogo 19:58, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Kalahari question 

message: Hi! Can someone answer my question about incosistency asked on the Discussion page of the article "Xhosa"? Thanks. --Eleassar777 17:05, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Xhosa - question 

message: Is there any objective reason, beyond tradition, not to classify the common K and T sounds as clicks? -Ahruman 13:22, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Oh yes, of course. [k] and [t] have only one point of articulation, whereas clicks always have two. Furthermore, [k] and [t] are pulmonal, while clicks are not (they're ingressive). And I'm sure there are even more reasons. — N-true 17:46, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Regarding clicks… 

message: Along the lines of editing languages, I was wondering if anyone has a definitive answer on what language the Bushman actor N!xau (G!kau, Gcao, etc.) speaks in "The Gods Must Be Crazy".  In the article on the actor, it's identified as the non-existent "Ungwatsi".  From naming similarities, I would have assumed that it was a poor anglicization of Kwadi, but if Kwadi is extinct, that can't be.  Any thoughts? Rcharman 16:40, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Certainly not Kwadi. (That would be something!) The Namibian newspaper article linked from the wiki article says he spoke Ju/'hoansi. That would make sense, with him being Namibian. Also, the name Gcao Coma would presumably correspond to [g|ao k|oma], not "G!kau", which is nonsense in any transcription I've ever seen. kwami 18:26, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

text: I concur. Also, Ungwatsi looks like a probable result of garbled transmission of  Ju/'hoansi. — mark ✎ 19:32, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Ungwatsi

message: It's always bothered me that this has been a separate article. Granted, we wouldn't list all IE languages under the main article, but we do list all the branches, with a few representative languages from each. In the case of a small family like KS, that's pretty much the same thing. Any objection to making this a section of the main article? kwami 00:01, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Good idea! I support it. The Khoisan languages article is quite short, so it won't become too lengthy or anything. — N-true 01:53, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Done. (I suggested this a couple years ago, and there've been no objections.) kwami 21:18, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  merge? 

message: Doubt is expressed in the article about all branches, with phrases like "not clear" and "doubtful".  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.41.51.240 (talk) 09:57, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Doubt 

message: There is some question out there as to whether any Khoisan specialists support the idea, first put forward by Greenberg, that Khoisan represents a genetic unity, in contrast to the view that it is a Sprachbund of some sort. The issue here is clearly not whether the arguments for Khoisan being a genetic unity are good or bad but whether (a) any linguists and (b) any Khoisan specialists support the view that it is. The first question can be answered in the affirmative: Christopher Ehret and Anthony Traill, among others, clearly support Khoisan. The second question can also be answered in the affirmative: one can cite Bonny Sands (1998a and 1998b), which George Starostin (2008:448) summarizes as follows (accurately, based on the glance I have taken at Sands's 1998 article): 
:A rigorous study has been also conducted by B. [Sands 1998], who, having run the available evidence through a series of lexicostatistical, phonological, semantical, and other tests, eventually comes to the conclusion that, while Sandawe definitely displays a significant number of shared features with the rest of Khoisan, Hadza does not, and is therefore less probable to be genetically related to these languages. Nevertheless, such a possibility is not altogether dismissed, and in Appendix 2 to her monograph, Sands still gives a bunch of Hadza items that, according to her opinion, could look like potential correlates to similar words in other Khoisan languages.
The Khoisanist Henry Honken (1988, 1998) also takes a position in favor of Khoisan. 
I hope this goes some way toward a definitive determination on this issue. 
The question then arises as to what the prevailing view is in Khoisan studies. This is a more delicate question. As usual, there is no census of linguists' views. In addition, a high proportion of linguists concerned may feel the evidence is more or less strong in one direction or the other but not feel they either can or must take a definitive position. They may also differ on the prospects for resolving the uncertainties. Also, as in other fields, many specialists may work on aspects of the languages and cultures concerned without taking up the genetic question. There may be no record of their opinions, if any, on the genetic question in the literature. 
Starostin's (2003) appreciation of the current situation is as follows: 
:Despite all the obvious progress that comparative Khoisan linguistics has undergone over the last half century, no Khoisanologist would deny that crucial questions in this field still remain unanswered. (Basic answers to these questions actually serve as the starting point in any particular area of comparative linguistics.) Not only are we still deprived of a strict and fully credible set of phonological correspondences among the present-day Khoisan languages, we do not even seem sure about whether a genetically related "Khoisan" family actually exists, and whether the "Khoisan" family is any more than a fantasy of some people deluded by the peculiar phonological closeness of most of these languages.
:The extreme point of view on this problem, propagated chiefly by the late Ernst Westphal in works such as [Westphal 1965] and [Westphal 1980], is not very popular today, for obvious reasons. While these and other works rightly emphasize the current lack of substantial evidence proving the existence of a genetic relationship between the several established groups of 'Bushman', this by no means gives Westphal a right to claim that such a relationship definitely does not exist. Furthermore, such an approach can hardly be called constructive when it comes to actually explaining what evidence there is. This is well understood by modern day scholars; therefore an approach of "moderate scepticism" rather than "decisive denial" is much more popular in Khoisanology today. The difference between the two approaches is summarized well in [Traill 1986], an article in which Anthony Traill both presents the reader with a good selection of comparative material and explains the problems related to its interpretation.
VikSol 04:18, 5 February 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't know much about Honken, he may well support KS, but Sands definitely does not. Of course she doesn't deny that it could be true, but her working theory based on lack of evidence is that it isn't. The literature in the field is about individual families and the areal influences between them. No-one talks about "Khoisan" as an actual family. The most you get is Güldemann linking Sandawe with Khoe, something which even some of his colleagues have dismissed for its methodology. (It looks good to me, actually, but the point is that even Khoe-Sandawe is not broadly accepted.) kwami (talk) 07:43, 5 February 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: It seems unlikely there would be a connection as the Khoe languages (and Khoe pastoralists who absorbed some San people, probably most of the Khoe genes are from assmilated San) came from East Africa about 2000 years ago (connected to the Sandawe) and the San had been separated from other people about 100,000 years. Thus unless languages from East Africa replaced the languages of the San at an earier date (entirely possible) then any similarities would be due to borrowing and influence of the languages on each other. From the relationship of the people I'd guess at Khoe-Sandawe having a distant relationship with Hadza and the Northern and Southern San having a distant relationship, but due to the split being too long ago and most of the indigenous languages being lost it is very difficult to prove  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.152.221.121 (talk) 10:35, 3 January 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: AFAIK Traill has changed his opinion on this. Ehret is not a Khoisanist and isn't well respected among historical linguists. That leaves Honken, vs. just about everyone else. kwami (talk) 11:38, 3 January 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Who supports Khoisan? 

message: Roman Stopa, in 1972, proved the Bushman langages are related to Indo-European ones.
His methods are similar to those of others in academic circles.
See the article on Roman Stopa in the Polish Wikipedia.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.154.3.117 (talk) 08:48, 24 July 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: No, he did NOT.  His theories are considered fringe, and therefore not eligible for Wiki.  An experienced linguist should keep a watch on this point so that this 'source' is not used. HammerFilmFan (talk) 22:36, 13 March 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Different idea 

message: Redirects have been made for all the spellings found in the Ruhlen appendix, since the correspondences weren't always obvious. — kwami (talk) 04:33, 27 September 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Names in Ruhlen 1987 

message: Map reads Khoi-San. Article is Khoisan. Which one is wrong? 81.156.138.154 (talk) 15:54, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
thread_title: Khoi-San or Khoisan???

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thread_title:  External links modified