Talk:Taa language

Sound samples?

Are there any sound samples of this language being spoken? It would greatly clarify the article, I think, to be able to hear all these sounds. grendel|khan 17:08, 2005 Mar 22 (UTC)

I agree Mark O'Sullivan 13:22, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

• i couldnT find sound samples from !Xóõ, but if you like to hear words and phrases which include click-sounds, go to this website:(http://ling.cornell.edu/khoisan/index.html) it'S is a project by the university of cornell. these are samples from ǂHoan and Sasi, which also belongs to the Khoesan family. --moorooduc 06:42, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

IPA of name

Can someone add a close IPA description of how to pronounce !Xóõ? Guaka 13:27, 10 May 2005 (UTC)

The German article gives [ǃxõː^H], added by Thomas Goldammer. I have not read either article, but I don't know of any superscript H in IPA. Perhaps Thomas meant to write [ǃxõːʜ]? Wikipeditor 09:03, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

The H would seem to represent high tone. --Ptcamn 09:16, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

As ought not be too surprising for a language with only 4000 people, I think its name is in IPA. I know that's not a very comforting answer, but it might be less intimidating like this:

Begin with your simple post-alveolar click and as your velum drops hold it there for a voicless fricative (like German) and the tip of your tongue should go into the /o/ position (with rounded lips of course), raise the tone, and make a long /o/ sound, with the latter end being nasalized (which kind of makes it diphthong, but with the same vowel quality). I think the article says you can make a velar nasal or a palatal nasal as the second /o/, rather than a nasal vowel. JesseRafe 05:08, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

I would also like to see an IPA transcription of !Xóõ. All indications seem to be that it's [k!xóõ] or [k!xóŋ]. Should we wait longer to see if anyone is confident enough about this? Commander Nemet 01:38, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

Great, now its 2013 and the article claims that ǃXóõ is pronounced /ˈkoʊ/. I think it is very unlikely that this is accurate. --Mudd1 (talk) 13:53, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

New table

I've made an improvement to the current tables, and they need to be double-checked before incoporated into the article. --Puzzlet Chung 03:38, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Non-click consonants

		bilab.	dental	post. dent.	velar	uvular
stop		p	t	ts	k	q
	voiced	b	d	dz	g	G
	asp.	ph	th	tsh	kh	qh
	asp. voiced	bh	dh	dzh
uv. fric.			tx	tsx
	voiced		dtx	dtsx
ejective				ts'	kx'	q'
	voiced			dts'	gkx'
eje. uv.			t'x'	ts'x'
prevo.			dt'x'	dts'x'
fricative				s	x
nasal		m	n
	glot.	m'	n'

Click consonants

		bilab.	dental	post. dent.	palatal	lateral
velar		k@	k|	k!	k=	k||
	voiced	g@	g|	g!	g=	g||
nasal		n@	n|	n!	n=	n||
	preglot.	'n@	'n|	'n!	'n=	'n||
	unv.	N@	N|	N!	N=	N||
uvu.		q@	q|	q!	q=	q||
	voiced	G@	G|	G!	G=	G||
	asp.	q@h	q|h	q!h	q=h	q||h
uvu. fric.		k@x	k|x	k!x	k=x	k||x
eje. uvu.		q@'	q|'	q!'	q='	q||'
	affr.	k@x'	k|x'	k!x'	k=x'	k||x'
asp. vel.		k@h	k|h	k!h	k=h	k||h
glot.		k@'	k|'	k!'	k='	k||'
voiced	uvu. fric.	gk@x	gk|x	gk!x	gk=x	gk||x
	asp.	gh@	g|h	g!h	g=h	g||h
	uvu. eje.	gk@x'	gk|x'	gk!x'	gk=x'	gk||x'

Looks good from the top of my head (but I don't have a !Xóõ phonology available right now. What are your sources? — mark ✎ 07:13, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

The current article. --Puzzlet Chung 11:22, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

Ah, I was under the impression that you meant 'improvement' in the sense of 'a more correct/complete phoneme inventory'. They look better this way. I'm not that happy with the non-IPA transcription of the sounds though (I know it was that way before). — mark ✎ 08:21, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

In the current tables, shouldn't the second to last column (corresponding alveolar clicks) be "corresponding uvular clicks"? Linka 15:46, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

No, they are exemplified by alveolar releases. If q|, G| etc. were used as the examples instead, they would be the 'corresponding dental clicks'. Maybe I can reword for clarity. 66.27.205.12 22:15, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

By all means, go ahead! — mark ✎ 22:55, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

info

A little info is needed on the people that speak this language.

Gringo300 2 July 2005 05:30 (UTC)

Ambiguous sentence

It is prepositional, and genitives, adjectives, relative clauses and even numbers come after the nouns to which they apply.

At first I thought this was talking about "even numbers" -- meaning non-odd numbers. I later realized that's probably not what's meant. I know it's not a big deal and most people (at least native English speakers) won't have a problem with it, but still I'd suggest someone who's sure about this rephrase that in an unambiguous way.--Cotoco 21:31, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

I fixed the grammar section to be a bit less ambiguous, and moved the blurb on Anthony Traill down to be combined with the "Other" section.--Hotchy 08:18, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

Just added a References section with some of Traill's works. Merged 'other' with 'Grammar' because otherwise there were going to be too much sections (if we get more content, we might want to restructure it). — mark ✎ 08:40, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

Bad Link?

Is anyone able to access the phonology link at the bottom of the page? I don't know if it's just me, if it may be temporarily unavailable, or if the page has been completely deleted. Perhaps it just needs an update?--Hotchy 04:58, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

Doesn't work for me, too. — mark ✎ 08:23, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

That whole site hasn't been working for a number of months now, unfortunately. --Whimemsz 03:25, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

[1] – Wikipeditor 09:11, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

Audio sample

Just completely randomly, would it be rather nifty to have audio samples of some of these more unusual phoenetics, so that folks uninitiated in the more advanced material can get a hang of things? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.68.87.209 (talk • contribs)

Ladefoged's analysis

What is the source for Peter Ladefoged's analysis of the clicks? thefamouseccles|Thefamouseccles 01:09, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

If I remember correctly, it's in SOWL (Sounds of the World's Languages). kwami 02:24, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

Homophones

Given the huge phonemic inventory, I was wondering if someone could wirte on the article if there are any/many homophones in ǃXóõ, since presumably it would be easy to avoid them. I mean words like "bird" and "wardrobe" being the same, not the extended semantic web of "head", BTW.--Estrellador* 18:03, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

It's difficult to find even minimal pairs in Khoisan languages. However, my impression (it's only that) is that homophones aren't all that uncommon. I don't know why; perhaps they're cognate but the connection's been lost, perhaps (and I'm only guessing) once a form exists, it's easier to apply to new words. kwami (talk) 03:23, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Ingressive clicks — a tautology?

What's with those "Ingressive voiceless nasal with delayed aspiration (↓ŋ̊ʰ)" anyway? Aren't all clicks supposed to be ingressive by definition anyway? And the only language with egressive clicks is Damin, as far as I know. — N-true (talk) 03:11, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Nasal clicks have two simultaneous airstreams. The nasal airstream is usually pulmonic egressive, but in this one language it's been shown to be ingressive. Ladefoged covers it in SOWL. I wonder if maybe similar sounds in other KS languages simply haven't been recognized. kwami (talk) 03:26, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Ah, so the nasal part of the click is ingressive. Maybe that should be made more clear in the article with a more or less short note. I find this quite an outstanding feature. — N-true (talk) 04:22, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

You're right. I added a comment. kwami (talk) 05:01, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. :) — N-true (talk) 12:29, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Unreferenced tags! oh noes

I added unreferenced tags because:

1. There are only two references, and they're from the same person. I guess this might be unavoidable, because this looks like a little-researched topic! however if anyone can find out more, or even put in page references... might be useful :)
2. There are no "little numbers" in the text sending people to the references. To be honest, when I found this page I did go WHAT? is this real or true?! I'm sure other people could do the same!

However, I'd say this is a really interesting article. And if it helps my linguistics...

Trouts! (talk) 17:53, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

Is Ta'a really pronounced [kǃxóŋ] ?

The article now includes this sentence:

That is, the name Taʼa may be dialectically [kǃxóŋ], and this in turn may be phonemically /kǃxóɲ/,
since [ɲ] does not occur word-finally. However, this cannot explain the short nasal vowels,
so Taʼa has at least 31 vowels.

Is this correct, or is this just a leftover from when the article was entitled !Xóõ? Soap ^Talk/_{Contributions} 16:33, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Yep, sorry. Just a typo. kwami (talk) 16:39, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

IPA vs. non-IPA

??! Could anyone please explain to me why the consonant tables of East !Xoon are in IPA and the consonant tables of West !Xoon are in a "practical orthography" (which, for the most part, is fairly similar)? --JorisvS (talk) 10:25, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Yep. That's what my source had. I'm not sure how I would convert the orthography to IPA. kwami (talk) 10:28, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Okay that does explain it. Well, I've put in a notice that the section should be converted into IPA. I'll have a better look at it myself later. --JorisvS (talk) 10:37, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

I couldn't see a way to do it that wouldn't add my own spin to the phonology, and I don't know what I'm talking about. kwami (talk) 10:48, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

References for West Koon

Kwami, it seems that you added the phonology for West Koon, but there isn't a reference for it. I'm trying to locate a published (or at least available) source for the DoBeS analysis, but with no luck. --Taivo (talk) 19:55, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

Sorry bout that. Ref to conference paper. Added. — kwami (talk) 16:35, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

Question about the choice for the 2nd example sentence in the "Phrases" section

I would like to ask if there is a particular reason for the choice of the phrase. If that is not the case it might be considered quite inappropriate for the article. Shiniri (talk) 22:20, 23 November 2020 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Shiniri (talk • contribs) 20:35, 22 November 2020 (UTC)