ǁXegwi or ǁXʼegwi (pronounced ; ), also known as Batwa, is an extinct ǃKwi language spoken at Lake Chrissie in South Africa, near the Swazi border. The last known speaker, Jopi Mabinda (also Jobi Mabinda), was murdered in 1988. However, a reporter for the South African newspaper Mail & Guardian reports that ǁXʼegwi may still have been spoken in the Chrissiesmeer district in 2011.
The ǁXʼegwi name for their language has been spelled giǁkwi꞉gwi or kiǁkwi꞉gwi. Their name for themselves, 'people of rock and water', has been transcribed tlou tle and kxlou-kxle, presumably renderings of . The Nguni (Zulu and Swazi) called them (a)batwa, amaNkqeshe and amaNgqwigqwi; the Sotho called them Baroa~Barwa.
Phonology
Tone From Köhler's material, it appears that ǁXʼegwi had a four-tone inventory.
Consonants ǁXʼegwi lost the abrupt clicks (the various manners of ǂ and ǃ) found in its relatives. It reacquired from Nguni Bantu languages, but clicks remained relatively infrequent, compared to other Tuu languages. It also had a series of uvular plosives not found in other Tuu languages.
Labialized consonants are recorded, both pulmonic and lingual; Honken (2020) interprets [CʷV] as /CoV/.
+ Pulmonic and ejective consonants BilabialAlveolar PalatalVelar Uvular Glottal median lateral median lateralPlosive tenuis aspirated voiced ejective velarized Affricate voiceless () aspirated voiced ejective velarized Nasal Fricative voiceless voiced Sonorant () is a marginal phoneme. and are exclusive to loanwords. + Lingual consonants Labial Dental Alveolar median lateral Nasal modal glottalized murmured Plosive voiced aspirated tenuis Affricatetenuis ejective
Vowels There is a great deal of variation between nasal vowels, [Ṽ], and oral vowels with a nasal coda, [Vŋ], so the phonemic status of nasal vowels is unclear. All researchers also transcribe long vowels (not shown):
+Modal vowelsFrontBackHigh Mid () ()Low
The non-modal vowels are transcribed by all researchers as glottalized; Traill (1979) interprets them as pharyngealized as in other Tuu languages. We transcribe them here as creaky voice:
+Non-modal vowelsFrontBackHigh MidLow
Syntax
Word order ǁXʼegwi exhibits subject–verb–object (SVO) word order, as can be seen in the following examples:
'we speak a matter now'
'I speak Bushman'
Sample text Marriage
References
External links ǁXʼegwi basic lexicon at the Global Lexicostatistical Database Sound recording of Jopi Mabinda speaking ǁXegwi ǁXegwi (xeg) Swadesh List by The Rosetta Project at the Internet Archive