Concept
Taa ˈtɑː, also known as ǃXóõ ˈkoʊ (also spelled ǃKhong and ǃXoon; ǃ͡χɔ̃ː˦), is a Tuu language notable for its large number of phonemes, perhaps the largest in the world. It is also notable for having perhaps the heaviest functional load of click consonants, with one count finding that 82% of basic vocabulary items started with a click. Most speakers live in Botswana, but a few hundred live in Namibia. The people call themselves ǃXoon (pl. ǃXooŋake) or ʼNǀohan (pl. Nǀumde), depending on the dialect they speak. The Tuu languages are one of the three traditional language families that make up the Khoisan languages. Taa is the word for 'human being'; the local name of the language is Taa ǂaan (Tâa ǂâã), from ǂaan 'language'. ǃXoon (ǃXóõ) is an ethnonym used at opposite ends of the Taa-speaking area, but not by Taa speakers in between. Most living Taa speakers are ethnic ǃXoon (plural ǃXooŋake) or 'Nǀohan (plural Nǀumde). Taa shares a number of characteristic features with West ǂʼAmkoe and Gǀui, which together are considered part of the Kalahari Basin sprachbund. Until the rediscovery of a few elderly speakers of Nǁng in the 1990s, Taa was thought to be the last surviving member of the Tuu language family. There is sufficient dialectal variation in Taa that it might be better described as a dialect continuum than a single language. Taa dialects fall into two groups, suggesting a historical spread from west to east: West Taa: Anthony Traill's West ǃXoon and Dorothea Bleek's Nǀuǁʼen East Taa ǃAma (Western) (Eastern) East ǃXoon (Lone Tree) Tsaasi–ǂHuan Tsaasi ǂHuan Traill worked primarily with East ǃXoon, and the DoBeS project is working with ʼNǀohan (in East Taa) and West ǃXoon. The various dialects and social groups of the Taa, their many names, the unreliability of transcriptions found in the literature, and the fact that names may be shared between languages and that dialects have been classified, has resulted in a great deal of confusion. Traill (1974), for example, spent two chapters of his Compleat Guide to the Koon [sic] disentangling names and dialects.
