NOTE ON CLICKS IN THE BANTU LANGUAGES

Author(s): A. Werner

Source: Journal of the Royal African Society, Vol. 2, No. 8 (Jul., 1903), pp. 416-421

Note from moderator: Alice Werner worked as a Blantyre Mission missionary in Nyasaland in 1890s and was more acquainted with the Maseko Ngoni having worked among some Maseko Ngoni as a teacher. 

IT is generally conceded that the clicks which occur in Xosa, in Zulu, and, to a limited extent in Sesuto, have been borrowed from the Hottentots. Accordingly we find a greater number of click-words, though not a greater variety of clicks, used by the Xosas than by the Zulus, the former having been more in contact with the previous occupants of the country than the latter. Dr. McCall Theal (History of South Africa, II., 196) says that the clicks "were introduced by females spared when the hordes to which they belonged were conquered, as is evident, not only from tradition, but from the words in which they occur being chiefly those pertaining to the occupations of women." This, however, scarcely holds good, at least as far as Zulu is concerned, as the following list of words (which might easily be made longer) will show. (It is scarcely necessary to point out that c stands for the dental click, q for the palatal, and x for the lateral).

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