In Click Languages, An Echo Of The Tongues Of The Ancients
By NICHOLAS WADE
Published: Tuesday, March 18, 2003
Do some of today's languages still hold a whisper of the ancient mother tongue spoken by the first modern humans? Many linguists say language changes far too fast for that to be possible. But a new genetic study underlines the extreme antiquity of a special group of languages, raising the possibility that their distinctive feature was part of the ancestral human mother tongue.
They are the click languages of southern Africa. About 30 survive, spoken by peoples like the San, traditional hunters and gatherers, and the Khwe, who include hunters and herders.
Each language has a set of four or five click sounds, which are essentially double consonants made by sucking the tongue down from the roof of the mouth. Outside of Africa, the only language known to use clicks is Damin, an extinct aboriginal language in Australia that was taught only to men for initiation rites.
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The reasoning behind that is, the clicks are hard to learn (though obviously everyone has the same set of basic tools built right in), and that it’s easier to imagine that the clicks might have been in the original language(s), but were also easy to wave bye-bye to.
Naturally, odds are good that I don’t agree with that. ;’)