Kwadi language
Extinct Khoisan language of Angola
title: "Kwadi language" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["khoe–kwadi-languages", "languages-of-angola", "extinct-languages-of-africa", "languages-extinct-in-the-1950s", "unclassified-languages-of-africa"] description: "Extinct Khoisan language of Angola" topic_path: "linguistics" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kwadi_language" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0
::summary Extinct Khoisan language of Angola ::
::data[format=table title="Infobox language"]
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| name | Kwadi |
| nativename | ǃKwaǀtse |
| states | Angola |
| extinct | 1960s-80s |
| familycolor | Khoisan |
| fam1 | Khoe–Kwadi |
| iso3 | kwz |
| glotto | kwad1244 |
| glottorefname | Kwadi |
| ethnicity | Kwadi |
| dia1 | Zorotua |
| :: |
| name = Kwadi | nativename = ǃKwaǀtse | states = Angola | extinct = 1960s-80s | familycolor = Khoisan | fam1 = Khoe–Kwadi | iso3 = kwz | glotto = kwad1244 | glottorefname = Kwadi | ethnicity = Kwadi | dia1 = Zorotua
Kwadi is an extinct "click language" once spoken in the southwest corner of Angola. It became extinct around 1960. There were only fifty Kwadi in the 1950s, of whom only 4–5 were competent speakers of the language. Three partial speakers were known in 1965, but in 1981 no speakers could be found. Salvage work was carried out in 2014 with two rememberers who had acquired the language from an old speaker while they were children.
Although Kwadi is poorly attested, there is enough data to show that it is a divergent member of the Khoe family, or perhaps cognate with the Khoe languages in a Khoe–Kwadi family. It preserved elements of proto-Khoe that were lost in the western Khoe languages under the influence of Kxʼa languages in Botswana, and other elements that were lost in the eastern Khoe languages.
The Kwadi people, called Kwepe (Cuepe) by the Bantu, appear to have been a remnant population of southwestern African hunter-gatherers, otherwise only represented by the Cimba, Kwisi, and the Damara, who adopted the Khoekhoe language. Like the Kwisi they were fishermen, on the lower reaches of the Coroca River.
Kwadi was alternatively known by varieties of the words Koroka (Ba-koroka, Curoca, Ma-koroko, Mu-coroca) and Cuanhoca. Zorotua, or Vasorontu, was apparently a dialect.
Phonology
Vowels
Kwadi is tentatively reconstructed as having the seven oral vowels the three nasal vowels . Diphthongs seem to have been and . The status of /ao/ is not certain, and /oa/, /ua/ may have been allophones.
Tones
The tone system is unclear, due to limited data and to the poor quality of recordings. At least two tones (high and low) are necessary to explain that data:
: 'dog', 'fish' : 'meat', 'man, male'
Consonants
The following consonants are attested. Those is parentheses are doubtful: they are either found in only a single lexeme, or are plausible allophones of another consonant.
::data[format=table]
| Labial | Dental | Alveolar | Lateral | Palatal | Velar | Uvular | Glottal | Click | voiceless | aspirated | glottalized | prenasal | fricative | Nasal | Prenasal | Stop | voiceless | voiced | aspirated | glottalized | Affricate | voiceless | voiced | aspirated | glottalized | Fricative | voiceless | voiced | glottalized | Trill | Approximant |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| mb | nd | ɲɟ | ŋɡ | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| , | , | , | () | , | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| , | , | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| () | ~ | () | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| () | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| () | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| () | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| :: |
Proto-Khoe–Kwadi *ǃ, *ǂ, *ǁ are replaced with non-click consonants such as .
In disyllabic words, the second consonant is predominantly /m/, /n/, /l/, /d/, /b/, and it is possible those were the only consonants allowed within morphemes in native words, as would be typical for the area.
Morphology
Pronouns
Kwadi has personal pronouns for first and second person in singular, dual, and plural numbers. Pronouns have subject, object, and possessive cases. 1st person plural may have distinguished clusivity. Object pronouns are suffixed with -le/-de, except for the first person dual object pronoun, which is just mu. Possessive pronouns are the same as the subject form, except for the first person singular possessive pronoun, which is tʃi. Third person pronouns are simply the demonstratives, which are formed with a demonstrative base ha- followed by a gender/number suffix.
::data[format=table title="Personal Pronouns"]
| singular | dual | plural | 1st | 2nd | 3rd | masc | fem |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ta | ʔamu ~ hamu | ʔala (EXCL) | |||||
| ʔuhina, hina (INCL?) | |||||||
| sá | uwa ~ huwa | ʔu ~ hu | |||||
| háde | hawa | hau | |||||
| hɛɛ ( | haʔe | ||||||
| :: |
The known possessive pronouns are tʃi 'my' and ha 'his'. From the Khoe languages, it's not expected that all pronouns had distinctive possessive forms.
Nouns
Kwadi nouns distinguished three genders (masculine, feminine, and common), as well as three numbers (singular, dual, and plural). Some nouns form their plural with suppletion. For example: tçe "woman" vs. tala kwaʼe "women". The attested paradigm of nominal suffixes for masculine and feminine nouns is given below.
::data[format=table]
| singular | dual | plural | Masculine | Feminine | Common |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| -dɛ | -wa | -u | |||
| -e | -ʔɛ | ||||
| -(n)dɛ | -ʔV | ||||
| :: |
References
References
- {{glottolog. khoe1240. Khoe–Kwadi
- Anne-Maria Fehn & Jorge Rocha (2023) Lost in translation: A historical-comparative reconstruction of Proto-Khoe-Kwadi based on archival data. ''Diachronica'' 40:5, p. 609–665.
- Güldemann, Tom. (August 2006). "Changing profile when encroaching on hunter-gatherer territory?: towards a history of the Khoe–Kwadi family in southern Africa". Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
- Roger, Blench. (1999). "Challenging Elusiveness: Central African Hunter-Gatherers in a Multidisciplinary Perspective".
- "Kwadi: Zorotua language".
- Fehn, Anne-Maria. (2020). Towards a reconstruction of Proto Khoe-Kwadi: The challenges (and benefits!) of applying the historical-comparative method to archival data. Handout of paper presented at the Zoom meeting of the KBA Network, 15 October 2020.
- Güldemann, Tom. (2013). "The Khoesan Languages". Routledge.
- Fehn, Anne-Maria. (24 November 2020). "Preliminary notes on Kwadi grammar and implications for the morphological reconstruction of proto Khoe-Kwadi". Berlin Colloquium on African Linguistics.
- Westphal 1971: 395
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