<div dir="ltr"><h1 id="gmail-headline" class="gmail-headline" style="visibility: visible;">Which Language Uses the Most Sounds? Click 5 Times for the Answer</h1>
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<a class="gmail-byline-column-link" href="http://www.nytimes.com/column/what-in-the-world">What in the World</a> </p>
<p class="gmail-byline">By <span>
<span class="gmail-byline-author">BRYANT ROUSSEAU</span>
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<time class="gmail-dateline" datetime="2016-11-26T09:29:11-05:00">NOV. 25, 2016</time>
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<span class="gmail-caption-text">Speakers of Khoisan
languages, like the San people in Namibia, use click consonants, packing
a lot of information into brief words.</span>
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Eric Lafforgue/Gamma-Rapho, via Getty Images </span>
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<p class="gmail-story-body-text gmail-story-content">With
five distinct kinds of clicks, multiple tones and strident vowels —
vocalized with a quick choking sound — the Taa language, spoken by a few
thousand people in <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/botswana/index.html?inline=nyt-geo" title="More news and information about Botswana." class="gmail-meta-loc">Botswana</a> and <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/namibia/index.html?inline=nyt-geo" title="More news and information about Namibia." class="gmail-meta-loc">Namibia</a>, is believed by most linguists to have the largest sound inventory of any tongue in the world.</p><figure id="gmail-audio-100000004734135" class="embedded gmail-audio-jplayer gmail-media gmail-audio">
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<h4 class="gmail-headline">Sound of the Strident Vowel in !Xoon <span class="gmail-duration">0:01</span></h4>
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<p class="gmail-summary">This sentence in !Xoon, translated as “I eat porridge,” includes a strident vowel at the end. <span class="gmail-credit"></span></p>
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<p class="gmail-story-body-text gmail-story-content">The
exact count differs among scholars. Studies commonly cite more than 100
consonants, and some say there are as many as 164 consonants and 44
vowels. English, by comparison, has about 45 sounds at its disposal,
total.</p><figure id="gmail-taamap" class="gmail-interactive gmail-interactive-embedded gmail-limit-small gmail-layout-small">
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<img id="gmail-g-ai0-0" class="gmail-g-aiImg" src="https://static01.nyt.com/newsgraphics/2016/11/25/taamap/27336a5c570c120ea02e35df9ec8bdb15852aeb8/1126-web-TAAmap-Artboard_2.png">
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<p class="gmail-g-aiPstyle0">ANGOLA</p>
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<p class="gmail-g-aiPstyle0">ZAMBIA</p>
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<p class="gmail-g-aiPstyle0">ZIMBABWE</p>
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<p class="gmail-g-aiPstyle1">BOTSWANA</p>
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<div id="gmail-g-ai0-5" class="gmail-g-type gmail-g-aiAbs" style="width:36.4515%">
<p class="gmail-g-aiPstyle2">Windhoek</p>
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<div id="gmail-g-ai0-6" class="gmail-g-type gmail-g-aiAbs" style="width:35.4001%">
<p class="gmail-g-aiPstyle1">NAMIBIA</p>
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<div id="gmail-g-ai0-7" class="gmail-g-type gmail-g-aiAbs" style="top: 43.8235%; left: 64.1296%;">
<p class="gmail-g-aiPstyle3">Gaborone</p>
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<div id="gmail-g-ai0-8" class="gmail-g-type gmail-g-aiAbs" style="top: 50.5882%; right: 12.2038%;">
<p class="gmail-g-aiPstyle4">SWAZILAND</p>
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<div id="gmail-g-ai0-9" class="gmail-g-type gmail-g-aiAbs" style="top: 61.7647%; right: 26.0371%;">
<p class="gmail-g-aiPstyle4">LESOTHO</p>
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<div id="gmail-g-ai0-10" class="gmail-g-type gmail-g-aiAbs" style="width:27.4899%">
<p class="gmail-g-aiPstyle5">Atlantic</p>
<p class="gmail-g-aiPstyle5">Ocean</p>
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<div id="gmail-g-ai0-11" class="gmail-g-type gmail-g-aiAbs" style="width:56.9307%">
<p class="gmail-g-aiPstyle0">SOUTH AFRICA</p>
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<div id="gmail-g-ai0-12" class="gmail-g-type gmail-g-aiAbs" style="width:23.4948%">
<p class="gmail-g-aiPstyle5">Indian</p>
<p class="gmail-g-aiPstyle5">Ocean</p>
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<div id="gmail-g-ai0-13" class="gmail-g-type gmail-g-aiAbs" style="top: 90.2941%; left: 17.0186%;">
<p class="gmail-g-aiPstyle6">Khoisan language group</p>
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By The New York Times </div>
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<p class="gmail-story-body-text gmail-story-content">Taa,
also known as !Xoon, is part of the Khoisan language group, spoken in
the Kalahari Desert and hardly anywhere else. All Khoisan languages use
click consonants, which were featured in the hit 1980 film “<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1984/10/28/arts/film-view-is-the-gods-must-be-crazy-only-a-comedy.html">The Gods Must Be Crazy</a>.”</p><figure id="gmail-audio-100000004734338" class="embedded gmail-audio-jplayer gmail-media gmail-audio">
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<h4 class="gmail-headline">Sound of the 5 Basic Click Types in !Xoon <span class="gmail-duration">0:14</span></h4>
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<p class="gmail-summary">Hear the five basic click types: dental, alveolar, palatal, lateral and bilabial. <span class="gmail-credit"></span></p>
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<p class="gmail-story-body-text gmail-story-content">The
five click types in !Xoon are the dental click (written with the symbol
ǀ), which is something like the tut-tut sound English speakers make;
the alveolar click (written ǃ), made with the tip of the tongue against
the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alveolar_ridge" title="Alveolar ridge">alveolar ridge</a>);
the palatal click (ǂ), made with a flat tongue broadly placed on the
palate; the lateral click (ǁ), like the sound equestrians use to
communicate with horses; and the rarest click of all in the Khoisan
languages, the bilabial click (ʘ), made with both lips.</p><p class="gmail-story-body-text gmail-story-content">Combining these basic click types with other sounds yields about 43 distinct click consonants.</p><p class="gmail-story-body-text gmail-story-content">“Once
clicks, which are difficult to produce in articulatory terms, are
integrated in the sound system, and speakers are accustomed to utter
them frequently, they are ideal speech sounds with very distinctive
acoustic properties,” said Christfried Naumann, a linguistics researcher
at Humboldt University in Berlin.</p><figure id="gmail-audio-100000004734483" class="embedded gmail-audio-jplayer gmail-media gmail-audio">
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<h4 class="gmail-headline">!Xoon Vocabulary: ǂqùhm ǁhûũ <span class="gmail-duration">0:03</span></h4>
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<p class="gmail-summary">ǂqùhm ǁhûũ means the sound of a sharp object falling point-first into sand. <span class="gmail-credit"></span></p>
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<p class="gmail-story-body-text gmail-story-content">Languages
that use clicks can pack a lot of information into brief words. “Many
concepts might be expressed in a single syllable in Taa that would take
three to four syllables in English,” said Bonny Sands, a linguist who
teaches at Northern Arizona University.</p>
<p class="gmail-story-body-text gmail-story-content" id="gmail-story-continues-1">But they have a drawback, too, at least for students trying to share secrets in the classroom: It is difficult to whisper them.</p><figure class="gmail-media gmail-video gmail-youtube embedded gmail-layout-large-horizontal">
<figcaption class="gmail-caption"><span class="gmail-caption-text">Hear the sounds of !Xoon, also spelled !Xóõ, from the University of California, Los Angeles Phonetics Lab Archive.</span> <span class="gmail-credit"></span></figcaption>
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<p class="gmail-story-body-text gmail-story-content">Speakers
of click languages must be “masters of breath,” said Amanda Miller, a
researcher in the linguistics department at Ohio State University. “The
most challenging skill that children have to achieve to speak a click
language is to produce syllables that commence with a click consonant by
breathing air in, and then quickly shift to breathing out to produce
the following vowel, without leaving an intervening pause.”</p><figure id="gmail-audio-100000004734585" class="embedded gmail-audio-jplayer gmail-media gmail-audio">
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<h4 class="gmail-headline">!Xoon Vocabulary: !húlu ts’êẽ <span class="gmail-duration">0:01</span></h4>
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<p class="gmail-summary">!húlu ts’êẽ means the sound a rotten egg makes when shaken. <span class="gmail-credit"></span></p>
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<p class="gmail-story-body-text gmail-story-content">Fittingly
for the language with the most sounds, !Xoon is rich with words that
describe noises. The sound of a sharp object falling point-first into
sand is ǂqùhm ǁhûũ The sound of a rotten egg when shaken is !húlu
ts’êẽ. The sound of grass being ripped by a grazing animal: gǀkx’àp.</p><figure id="gmail-audio-100000004734552" class="embedded gmail-audio-jplayer gmail-media gmail-audio">
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<h4 class="gmail-headline">!Xoon Vocabulary: gǀkx’àp <span class="gmail-duration">0:01</span></h4>
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<p class="gmail-summary">gǀkx’àp means the sound of grass being torn off by a grazing animal. <span class="gmail-credit"></span></p>
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<p class="gmail-story-body-text gmail-story-content">Why
did the use of clicks arise? In Khoisan languages, word lengths are
limited to one or two syllables, so one theory holds that a large number
of consonants and vowels became necessary to express an expansive
vocabulary.</p><p class="gmail-story-body-text gmail-story-content">Everybody
can make these sounds, though, not just southern Africans. So given how
efficient (and fun) they can make speech, the bigger mystery may be why
more languages don’t use clicks. Tsk tsk.</p><p class="gmail-story-body-text gmail-story-content"><br></p><p class="gmail-story-body-text gmail-story-content">From the NYTiumnes, 1/1/17<br></p><br clear="all"><br>-- <br><div class="gmail_signature">**************************************<br>N.b.: Listing on the lgpolicy-list is merely intended as a service to its members<br>and implies neither approval, confirmation nor agreement by the owner or sponsor of the list as to the veracity of a message's contents. Members who disagree with a message are encouraged to post a rebuttal, and to write directly to the original sender of any offensive message. A copy of this may be forwarded to this list as well. (H. Schiffman, Moderator)<br><br>For more information about the lgpolicy-list, go to <a href="https://groups.sas.upenn.edu/mailman/" target="_blank">https://groups.sas.upenn.edu/mailman/</a><br>listinfo/lgpolicy-list<br>*******************************************</div>
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