Tshwa phonology

The Cire-cire (not cited) dialect has the following consonant inventory:

Consonant phonemes of the Cire-cire dialect (not cited)

	Bilabial	Dental	Alveolar	Lateral	Post- alveolar	Velar	Uvular	Glottal
Nasal click		ᵑǀ	(ᵑǃ)	ᵑǁ	(ᵑǂ)
Oral click		ǀ ᶢǀ ǀʰ	(ǃ ᶢǃ ǃʰ)	ǁ ᶢǁ ǁʰ	(ǂ ᶢǂ ǂʰ)
Glottalized click		ǀˀ		ǁˀ
Affricate click		(ǀqχ)		(ǁqχ)
Nasal stop	m		n			ŋ	ɴ
Oral stop	p   b		t   d			k   ɡ	q   ɢ	ʔ
Affricate		tθ   dð	ts   dz	tɬ   dɮ	tʃ   dʒ
Fricative	ɸ   β	θ   ð	s   z	ɬ   ɮ	ʃ   ʒ	x   ɣ	χ   ʁ
Approximant			ɹ	l		ɰ

The clicks have a very uneven distribution: Only a dozen words begin with one of the palatal clicks (ǂ), and these are replaced by dental clicks (ǀ) among younger speakers. Only half a dozen words start with one of the alveolar clicks (ǃ), and half a dozen more with one of the affricated clicks. These rather marginal sounds are placed in parentheses in the chart.

Tsoa has the five vowels /a e i o u/. It is not clear if Tsoa has long vowels, or simply sequences of identical vowels /aa ee ii oo uu/.

	Front		Central		Back
	Short	Long	Short	Long	Short	Long
Close	i	iː	ʉ	ʉː	u	uː
Near-close	ɪ	ɪː			ʊ	ʊː
Close-mid	e	eː	ə	əː	o	oː
Open-mid	ɛ	ɛː			ɔ	ɔː
Open	æ	æː	a	aː	ɑ	ɑː

There are two tones, high and low, plus a few cases of mid tone.

In the northern dialect of Kua, like all other East Kalahari Khoe languages, the palatal click series has become palatal stops. Southern Kua has retained the palatal clicks, but the dental stops have palatalized, as they have in |Gǀui and ǂʼAmkoe. Thus northern Kua has /ɟua/ 'ash' and /d̪u/ 'eland', whereas southern Kua has ᶢǂua 'ash' and /d̪ʲu/ (or perhaps /ɟu/) 'eland'.

External links

• Tshwa language