ǀXam phonology

Consonants

Compared to other Tuu languages like Taa, ǀXam has a more restricted inventory of consonants particularly the clicks, where there are only 8 series of click accompaniments, far fewer than East !Xoon Taa's 18. A preliminary consonant inventory of ǀXam, including egressive stops, fricatives, and affricates as well as ingressive clicks, is listed below.

ǀXam consonants

		Egressive					Ingressive
		Labial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal	Labial	Dental	Alveolar	Lateral	Palatal
Simple Stops	tenuis	(p)	t		k	ʔ	ʘ	ǀ	ǁ	ǃ	ǂ
	voiced	b	d		ɡ		ᶢʘ	ᶢǀ	ᶢǁ	ᶢǃ	ᶢǂ
Nasal		m	n		ŋ		ᵑʘ	ᵑǀ	ᵑǁ	ᵑǃ	ᵑǂ
Glottalized							ʘˀ	ǀˀ	ǁˀ	ǃˀ	ǂˀ
Delayed aspiration							ʘh	ǀh	ǁh	ǃh	ǂh
Aspirated			t͡sʰ		k͡x		ʘ͡kʰ	ǀ͡kʰ	ǁ͡kʰ	ǃ͡kʰ	ǂ͡kʰ
Velar frication			tx~t͡sx				ʘ͡x	ǀ͡x	ǁ͡x	ǃ͡x	ǂ͡x
Ejective/Ejective contour			tʼ~t͡sʼ		k͡xʼ		ʘ͡kxʼ	ǀ͡kxʼ	ǁ͡kxʼ	ǃ͡kxʼ	ǂ͡kxʼ
Fricative			s		x	h
Sonorant		w	ɾ~l	j

Speech of mythological characters

Bleek notes that particular animal figures in ǀXam mythology have distinctive speech patterns. For example, Tortoise substitutes clicks with labial non-clicks, Ichneumon replaces clicks with ts, tsy, ty, dy etc., and Jackal makes use of a "strange" labial click, "which bears to the ordinary labial click ʘ, a relation in sound similar to that which the palatal click ǂ bears to the cerebral click ǃ". The Moon, and perhaps Hare and Anteater, even use "a most unpronounceable" click in place of all clicks save the bilabial. Other changes noted include the Blue Crane's speech, who ends the first syllable of almost every word with a /t/.

External links

• ǀXam language