ǂʼAmkoe /ˈæmkɔɪ/ AM-koy, formerly called by the dialectal name ǂHoan (Eastern ǂHȍã, ǂHûân, ǂHua, ǂHû, or in native orthography ǂHȍȁn), is a severely endangered Kxʼa language of Botswana.
West ǂʼAmkoe dialect, along with Taa (or perhaps the Tsaasi dialect of Taa) and Gǀui, form the core of the Kalahari Basin sprachbund, and share a number of characteristic features, including the largest consonant inventories in the world.
The East and West populations had no knowledge of each other, but when brought together in 1996, they were able to communicate, and found the differences amusing.
It has been specified as Eastern ǂHoan to distinguish it from Western ǂHuan, a dialect of the unrelated Taa language.
The disambiguator de Khutse is used to distinguish it from a variety of Taa also called Tshase and Sase.
The ǂʼAmkoe language shows evidence that it previously had extensive contact with Taa.
On the other hand, the moribund state of the language is apparent in its phonology, and sounds not found in Gǀui appear to have been lost by many of the remaining speakers.
Honken (2013), which is based on Gruber (1973), says the ǂHȍã qualities, also /a e i o u/, may be modal, breathy, laryngealized, or pharyngealized, and that all may be nasalized.
Tone in ǂʼAmkoe shows acoustic characteristics of both neighbouring consonants and vowel phonation.
Given that Collins did not control for initial consonants in his analysis, his description is consistent with Gerlach's for Nǃaqriaxe dialect.
Gerlach (2012)[7] reports different consonant inventories for different speakers of Nǃaqriaxe dialect: A smaller one, similar to that of the neighboring Gǀui language and to previous accounts, is used by most speakers, including those who speak more Gǀui than ǂʼAmkoe.
Gerlach (2015) analyses the change of voicing as being a phonetic detail due to the nature of the release rather than being phonemically prevoiced.
A contrastive /qʼ/ was reported by Gruber (1975) from a word or two in ǂHoan dialect, but could not be confirmed in Nǃaqriaxe, and cross-linguistic comparison gives reason to believe that /qʼ/ and /qχʼ/ are the same consonant.
Consonants found in word-medial (C2) position are /b/ (often [β]), /m, n, ɾ/; the phonemic status of medial [w] in one word is unclear.
The palatal series, which is most developed in ǂHȍã dialect, derive historically from dental consonants.
As with non-clicks, the difference is in whether the speaker retains pre-voiced clicks like those found in the Ju languages and Taa.
This is especially so considering that the pre-voiced clicks are attested from only a single speaker, for whom extensive data is not available, and that the delayed-aspirated series has not been reported from ǂHoan.)
Gerlach (2015) finds the following inventory, considering Nǃaqriaxe and ǂHoan dialects: The unusual distinction between glottalized and ejective clicks is similar to that found in Gǀui.
They are sporadically prenasalized, even in initial position, which many investigators believe is due to the difficulty of maintaining the voicing.
above, the plain click affricates /ʘχ, ǀχ, ǁχ, ǃχ, ǂχ/ appear to be found only in Gǀui loans.
A lexical word is typically of the shapes CVV (69% in Nǃaqriaxe dialect), CVN (8%), or CVCV (22%, often loans from Gǀui), with two tone-bearing units.
Gerlach (2015) believes that the CVV and CVN patterns derive historically from *CVCV through loss of C2 (such as a medial /l/ in related languages) or V2 in all cases, not just those that can be shown.
In grammatical words, clicks are mostly found in CVV and CVq (pharyngealized) syllables, though there is a plural suffix -/ᵑǀe/.
The SVO word order of ǂHõã typical of the Kxʼa and Tuu language families.
ǂHõã has nominal postpositions used for locative relations (see Collins 2001), and the possessor precedes the head noun.
ǂHõã grammar is characterized by a number of features common to the Kxʼa and Tuu languages.
Third, there is a general-purpose preposition (referred to as the "linker" in Collins 2003) which appears between post-verbal constituents.