Khoisan

What the term Khoisan covers

For much of the 20th century these languages were thought to share a common ancestor. That view is no longer accepted. They are now held to comprise three families, Khoe, Tuu and Kxʼa, and two isolates, Sandawe and Hadza of Tanzania, and specialists keep the name as a term of convenience, much as Papuan and Australian are used. Anthony Traill first accepted the family in 1986 and by 1998 had concluded it could not be shown, since it rested on one feature, the presence of clicks. All but the two Tanzanian languages are native to southern Africa, and today they survive mainly in the Kalahari of Namibia and Botswana. Most are endangered, and most have no written record.

Which Khoisan language Zimbabwe means

The Languages of Zimbabwe article identifies the constitution's Koisan as Tshwa, a Khoe language. The same article lists Tjwao, formerly Tshwao, an endangered Khoe language of Tsholotsho District whose remaining speakers are all over 60, with a slightly larger group holding a passive or partial knowledge of it.

How clicks set these languages apart

In these languages clicks are ordinary consonants, written with characters such as ǃ and ǂ. A click uses two movements of the tongue that can work partly on their own, which lets the consonant inventory grow very large: Juǀʼhoan has 48 click consonants, nearly as many others and four tones. Neighbouring Bantu languages, among them Xhosa, Zulu and Northern Ndebele, took clicks from Khoisan speakers they displaced, absorbed or married into.