Khoisan language family - the click languages of Africa

Today we're starting a new series - language families of the world. And this first video is dedicated to a family of the most unique and distinct languages of the world - the Khoisan languages. They are spoken in Africa and they are famous for their very striking feature - a huge variety of click sounds. The only thing is that is it not yet clear if this family really exists, or if it is a collection of smaller, non related language families.
Support the channel: / julingo
Music used:
Streams of Africa by Sahara Skylight
Videos used:
Bushmen Click Language - Ancient dialect of San People, Namibia
• Bushmen Click Language...
Beautiful click consonants in Namibia's Khoekhoe language | Emeloelaj speaking Nama | Wikitongues
• Beautiful click conson...
Sandawe - Conversation in Sandawe
• Sandawe - Conversation...
Hadza Language
• Hadza Language
#namibia #botswana #angola

[@snd3054]

In the early 1980s, a movie called "The Gods Must be Crazy" became the longest running film in Ottawa. That film was my first exposure to a 'clicking' language. Thanks for your linguistic videos - they're fascinating!

[@ashwinnmyburgh9364]

I know that movie! My parents loved it. It was my first exposure to the San people and the San languages.

[@duncanthomson5564]

Actually I think that movie was originally released as something like "Les dieux sont tombee sur la tete" (sorry for my horrible French).

[@hendo19742]

SOUTH AFRICANS LOVED THAT MOVIE, CLASSIC 😊❤❤👍👍🇿🇦🇿🇦🇿🇦

[@XM525754]

There is nothing to apologize about, this is a complex field and you did an excellent job of explaining it to non-linguists.

[@navytav]

This is an interesting new direction for your channel. I look forward to your next video!

[@rapportbuildingfirst8695]

Great series. Will look forward to hearing about the family/ families of the Australian Aboriginal languages.

[@LangJester]

The first time I heard clicks in a language, I was baffled, like most of the people who haven't visited South Africa or Botswana. Great Video Didi.

[@listenup2882]

There's tv and the internet.

[@user-dy8pl3jb8i]

Thanks for info 😊 I'm from Tuareg

[@henriethakarises6052]

spot on. I am A Nama speaking (reading and writing) woman from Namibia and hearing this was so informative. great job😍

[@Mricecreamandcookiespluscake]

Hey I'm from SA and I really wanna learn the language but it's really hard to find resources. Do u have any suggestions?

[@-arche-7926]

This was a *great* video, thank you so much for this! Much appreciate the new direction of this channel & am stonked for more! Especially every grammar feature review I so very much enjoy!

[@juandiegoprado]

This is looking like it’ll be a great series! You did a great job explaining such an interesting but complicated topic 👌🏻 Looking forward to the next episode

[@kathleenscharf7600]

This new approach is very interesting. I loved it! Thank you.

[@rahuldhargalkar]

Keep it going Julingo! ^^ You're doing an amazing work!

[@liupeks7]

Julieeee tienes uno de los mejores contenidos en lenguas del mundo, estoy muy orgulloso de todos tus contenidos y labor de investigación, te admiro mucho, y cuando yo sea grande quiero ser como tu!!😁

[@amorgeises229]

Well done ma'am... am a Damara guy living in Namibia, swakopmund...love your videos...

[@santiagogarces1321]

I highly appreciate your impartiality and objectiveness in these videos. Very professional.

[@renatomorello4318]

How interesting! This new serie is an excellent ideia, dear teacher! Thank you for sharing your beautiful work and knowledge with the world. God bless and guide you! And, once the now are talking about Africa, may God bless everyone in that beautiful continent!

[@mnic86]

Great work with this video Julie!! Keep up the great work! 👍👍😊😊

[@JohnSmith-fo5cx]

Another great video. Thanks for the information.

[@W4rH3aR7]

Great video!! I really like this idea of presenting language families, it sounds really interesting!! Keep up the good work :D

[@ceunori]

It was very interesting and informative. Can't wait for more!

[@bazyl_ia6425]

Can’t wait to see more of that series!

[@papazataklaattiranimam]

Great video like always 👍

[@aroni_odogwu]

Amazing videos, please do not stop!!! Great explanations, succinct and very didactic. And nice editing!

[@oriolagullo9800]

Ahaa, you started by one of the most interesting ones. Good job!!

[@dejanpaucnik8263]

Great video, very interesting and well researched introduction to Khoisan and maybe related languages (or not). Thank you so much for this first video in what looks to becomes a very interesting series..

[@matthewmeyers6917]

Thanks for making this. I was researching neuroscience of prosody and this was about the only truly education video on this topic I could find.

[@sepehrwallace4967]

Juli i love your videos, your accent is great.

[@GustavoLadeira42]

I loved the video! I just found your channel and immediately subscribed.

[@robertschlesinger1342]

Excellent video. Very interesting, informative and worthwhile video. A must see for most everyone.

[@llywrch7116]

One mystery that I would like to see addressed someday -- not necessarily by you, Julie -- is why the cradle of humanity, Africa, has so few language families: Afro-Asiatic, Nilo-Saharan, Bantu, & the Khoi-San families. (Okay, the native languages of Madagascar belong to another language family, but those people came from the SW Pacific.) One would think that time & distance would lead to a flowering of many languages, perhaps only a few related. Did internal warfare & colonialism destroy this diversity?

[@vincivedivicilextalionas4036]

This was very informative. Thank you!

[@comred2297]

Love your work! You are great :)

[@sprogg2001]

So glad I stumbled across your channel

[@someguy1914]

That was fantastic thank you, i loved the details about the generics, maybe you could include more details on language structure and what makes them unique!

[@AlissaSanders]

Thank you for this video and highlighting the importance and diversity of African languages ❤

[@dikshantrajbhandari2805]

Such an interesting video!

[@JeffBehary]

Such a cool channel

[@arielschant9841]

Brava, i newly discovered your channel and you’re very good! kiss kiss from Italy

[@guilhermecamposnogueira4644]

I Love your videos

[@fuinhaamiguinha8932]

Excellent video!

[@jean-claudewallard9309]

There is something fascinating in language families and particularly in isolates. It's like following those humans who moved from one place to another, figuring out how their language evolved, keeping roots but forming a new language. It's like travelling through ages.

[@giuseppersa2391]

Julie thank you for showing our First Peoples to the World. From Giuseppe in Cape Town South Africa 🇿🇦🌻🌹

[@yardhe7290]

It's sad the only indigenous people of South Africa doesn't have there language recognised as an official language . What does the black Bantu Nguni people governing SA have against the FIRST NATION PEOPLE ?

[@amirhoseinshams256]

NICE👌👍 it's very interesting! Until now, I did not know anything about African languages. It was a very good video Thanks!❤

[@francis5518]

Interesting!! Cheers from Uruguay :)

[@mehmetkurtkaya3106]

Language families are interesting and will need to be revised.

[@behzadparsa44]

Good job thank you.

[@sjadbalin6384]

great video as always can you make video about ancient etrucean language?

[@brianphillips1864]

Thanks for explaining the (apparent) status of these ongoing inquiries to us casuals. Much obliged.

[@ronaldl9085]

Thanks! Could you do another video on these languages and dive a bit deeper into them?

[@gashogasho1859]

Juli love 😍😍😍

[@georgiancrossroads]

Thanks Julie! Once again a marvelous summary of this most unusual language family. I hope you do more on language families. (I'm very curious about New Guinean languages.) By the way I have heard with my own ears while living in Haines Alaska clicks used by the Tlingit tribe. They are not as extensive as the African tribes, but they certainly are a feature. Any thoughts about that? Keep going. You channel is one of my must listens.

[@andres6039]

Tlingit uses ejectives, which can sound like clicks!

[@hainelangeni685]

Sweet video dear 💐 more research indeed needs to be done.

[@ginono5529]

can you do review of the isixhosa language they also have clicks sounds which is very close to isizulu the xhosa language has more clicks then zulu which was also used in the black panther movie

[@johannaetrishamorgan6850]

Well done 👍 very good outstanding summary of this language 👍

[@fanstream]

fascinating channel - dream channel of linguists and polyglots👍✨

[@dawncristinahaughton584]

Thrilled about this introduction to African languages. Would be great to know about any similarities between Asian tonal languages and tonal Khoi-san dialects. Also the Igbo language would be an interesting next video

[@polymath6475]

Tonogenesis occurred in Asian languages mostly through the evolution of shortened words down to single syllables. The voicing of the onset consonant along with the length of the coda was a good predictor for glottal resonance of the tone, and then those tonal categories evolved into individual contours over time. All tonal languages in Asia, many of which I speak, can map their tone system back back to a single unified theory which I've researched for 30 years. Tonogenesis in Africa I cannot be sure that it was due to word length. Many three syllable words in central and northern Bantu have tones on each syllable, but we can consider it as pitch. Now when I hear native speakers of English, I find that English is very tonal, especially since everybody uses the exact same tones and pitch in the same places. Many European languages are tonal like Swedish, Lithuanian, Serbian, Croatian, Slovene, and like Kinyarwanda and other Bantu languages they don't write the tone as word length and context determines it. In Asia, there are too many homonyms to guess without tone, and Mandarin is the worst due to the loss of so many onsets and codas (it's like French where so many letters are no longer pronounced) that even with tone, it's hard to get the right meaning of a word, to the point that any discussion beyond simple conversation always comes with subtitles on TV. So the writing system has to either write the tone or display the exact meaning in the case of Chinese. Now Mandarin is starting to get longer and longer words especially when compared to Taiwanese, Hakka, and Cantonese, often times combining two words together that have the same meaning, making it statistically the only word in the language with those two syllables together, otherwise the language doesn't work any more on single syllables. I think all languages are evolving through a cycle of word length vs tone that takes thousands of years to cycle through.

[@luizfelipedebarrosjordaoco207]

2 interesting things I'd like to share: 1. I've seen on a wikipedia article that there is a liturgical language in Australia that has clicks 2. I've seen a KZbin video that says that Herodotus wrote about a people living near the Sahara to the south of it whose language sounded "like the clicks of a bat" which lived in caves and ate insects and according to the video one hypothesis is that a few centuries before christ there was a xhoisan people living in that region as the description fits well with them as their languages have clicks, and according to the video they live in caves and eat insects (the channel always says that they use lots of generalizations and simplifications and make the bibliography available on the description, unfortunately I didn't read so I don't know if part of this is a generalization or more information about it)

[@luizfelipedebarrosjordaoco207]

looking at these topics it looks like the xhoisan (or proto-xhoisan) people spreaded a lot on the past but somehow most of them seem to have disappeared or were assimilated by other people

[@SantaFe19484]

Nice video!

[@grahamjennery2201]

Thank you, I am a South African of British descent. Please, what about the Nama language? I thought that was also Khoi -San

[@Jordi_Llopis_i_Torregrosa96]

you guys speak Afrikaans these days? English? what's the every day language usually among Europeans at least

[@andres6039]

Nama is a type of Khoi.

[@askitsallen]

No,let me correct you The nama/Damara people are only found in Namibia,Bostwana and south Africa..We are known as the Khoekhoe people our language is called khoekhoegowab.gowab meaning language so do you get it so if I translate it is khoekhoe language....Just thought you'd like to know about our beautifull language...peace

[@yardhe7290]

@@askitsallen Do you know why Nama is not an official language in SA ? To my understanding , the Khoi and San are the only true indigenous people of this land . Surely it should follow that their language should have pre eminence !!! ???

[@askitsallen]

@@andres6039 its not a type it is a khoisan language and its not khoi its khoe.I know as I'm a Damara/Nama native

[@magyarbondi]

It was interesting to hear Zulu and some other languages "live" when I was working with people from South Africa and Swaziland. :)

[@riverniletv7273]

Great job! Keep it up. I am very familiar with Nama and Damara.

[@askitsallen]

Yes From Namibia.We are the Damara/Nama tribe.The Second most populated tribe in Namibia.

[@muhannadjbara2656]

so complicated...and thanx a lot

[@anythinganyones9194]

Your tone is so sweet Wow 🤩 🥰 love u seriously

[@aysesultanguneroglu2618]

I just came across this channel! Did you read the book which talks about how the structure of the native language may affect how the speaker thinks and experiences the world? It is called "through the language glass". What would you think about it, i would like to discuss.

[@polymath6475]

Never heard of that book but my mind is intent on hearing more about it. I recently acquired the Tsou language, my fourth Formosan language (14 to go) by recording the New Testament aloud 5 times through and a dictionary of 10k example sentences in parallel also 5x through and I just returned from attending one of their church services Sep 5 and had a lot of enjoyable conversations there, and this language has really warped my brain unlike any other language I've ever encountered. First, besides being hard to pronounce long strings of vowels interspersed with glottal stops everywhere and weird consonant clusters, there are no prepositions which makes word order extremely rigid, but there are a dozen words for “the” and not in the German gender/case sense but based on perception. A sentence can only have 4 parts: VOS+time (but very limited like now, yesterday). None of the “the” words refer to subject or object, only the word order does. You can do sentence embedding inside the O or S. At first I thought the weirdest thing was how verb tense and aspect was the first word in the sentence conjugated for person completely separated from the declined verb. But even stranger is their way of talking about emotions and thinking. You don't use “heart” a lot (like in Chinese and Paiwan, but where English is more inclined to use “mind”), Tsou instead uses ”ear“ (koyu) and it's used for many thoughts and emotions. For example to think of doing is ear (akoyu), and required to do is ear-ear (akokoyu), I think is my-ear (koyu’u). And many emotions like happy/relaxed/angry are attached to shortened main verbs like hear, so there's very little stringing of verbs together because every phrase is the same length. But all these emotions point to all events happening through the ear. I didn't ask but I can only imagine how much of a handicap being deaf would be in this community. I don't know how exactly this has warped my perception as I'm used to these challenges, but Tsou is truly unique. The first word of the sentence forces me to think about the state of events, then repositioning the evidentiality of events through hear/ear logic and crafting the right amalgam of verb compounds to do that properly. 30 years ago when I learned Chinese, I found that most of what I expressed went through a separate filter and you really have to reconstruct the world events from top down using the appropriate filter. For example in English you frequently use the word “now” to represent perfective especially when paired with verbs not in continuous tense: I'm here now! I'm tired now！“Now” really has nothing to do with time, which is why in perfective languages you can't use ”now“, you have to use the “already” verb conjugation which many learners if Chinese confuse with the past tense. How can I'm here now or I'm tired now be in the past tense? Then the learner doesn't have a strong grasp of how to analyze and describe world events in a top down structure. Once you get that right, you'll always use the right words and be understood.

[@shisuiuchiha480]

Xhosa has +20 clicks not 3. All South African tribes have a Khoisan Maternal ancestry. And there are many Khoisan dialects that share terminology with Sotho-Tswana and Nguni languages.

[@yardhe7290]

Back off bru , this not about the Nguni . The indigenous people of South Africa must also be seen and heard .

[@askitsallen]

True the South African tribe have a khoisan influence in their languages.Which as originally from The Namibian tribes the San people and the Damara/Nama tribe.

[@mfundocele6718]

​@@yardhe7290 now say that in an indigenous South African language... "bru".

[@yardhe7290]

@@mfundocele6718 unfortunately the black Bantu people in power in the land of the Khoi and San refuse to invest in developing the first nation people's lives and LANGUAGE . So I can't respond in a Khoi dialect . We've been sidelined and oppressed by first whites and now blacks . The blacks migrants even declare themselves indigenous , but don't have a clue what the word actually means .

[@Scar_762]

The maternal ancestry came from the time when the black Nguni tribes wiped out entire clans of Khoi and San men . They then forcefully adopted the women and children into their tribes .

[@laurenmuller200]

Thank you so much for the video. I am trying to understand the rich recordered 19th century oral history in the /Xam language (Tuu group). Can you provide any information on the structure of the language? The sheer diversity of this group speaks to its ancient roots. Today, many Southern Africans, black and white, have some Khoisan ancestry. The San in South Africa were massacred by colonists, largely in late 18th and early 19th century, so their language "extinction" is related to an active extermination. If you do a video on isiXhosa you can explore how more of these clicks found there way into another African language.

[@johannaetrishamorgan6850]

Thank you very much appreciate 👍 excellent 👌

[@bbsaid218]

If you were an alien landing on earth…which language would you choose to learn? Which is the easiest language to learn? Which is the most difficult?

[@zabaanshenaas]

I'm mostly interested in learning Nama and Sandawe.

[@Mewa_BM]

Wow thank you

[@antg007]

I'm developing a D&D character who uses a click language. This is a cool resource.

[@user-ci2ss3di9m]

I'm surprised you didn't mention Bleek and Lloyd here. They extensively studied |Xam language in the late 1800s and early 1900s, back when it was still widely spoken in South Africa, and Bleek published a book on comparative grammar of the Khoi-San languages in 1862. They did a lot for the classification of Khoi-San languages, and they actually were in the field learning them.

[@yardhe7290]

It's an injustice that the Khoi Nama language is not an official language in SA . The Khoi and San people being the only true indigenous people of this land .

[@user-ci2ss3di9m]

@@yardhe7290 Agreed. The audacity of having |Xam be the language on the SA crest and still not truly recognizing the Khoikhoi and San and refusing to support them after the genocide.

[@yardhe7290]

@@user-ci2ss3di9m I wonder if the reason for ignoring the first nation of South Africa has something to do with the rights to land ?

[@justtiredofallthebs]

I believe this is a rhetorical question :-0 Spot on@@yardhe7290

[@ngcebomhlongo4950]

This is interesting.

[@fabianp1011]

As a language lover, I must say that I know almost nothing African languages, I should learn more about them 😂😂 People usually focus more on Indo-European languages, or in general European or Asian ones, but African languages are quite interesting and intriguing, those click sounds always amaze me Awesome video, as always 🥰🥰

[@abenacook]

Can you make a video on west African languages? Like Ghanaian languages?

[@fikadugebreslase9229]

We love you thanks

[@ZadenZane]

Hi Julie JuLingo. I was trying to work out where you are from... Are you from Georgia? (Georgia in the Caucuses, not Georgia USA...?)

[@jackpayne4658]

No, Julie explained in another video that she is from Latvia, but of Russian ancestry. So her 'mother tongue' is Russian.

[@askitsallen]

!Gâi!Oes-sorry it just means Good evening.Yes right I am From the Nama/Damara tribe in Namibia.Our language is Khoekhoegowab...I Just thought you'd like to know...

[@teklittewelde1487]

Can you make a video about the Tigrinya language?

[@philippegiraud723]

Thank you for this vid’ . These clicks languages are probably the remnants of the prehistoric times. Is it possible to have more détails concerning the clicks? Some grammatical points? Hello from France.

[@yeo4725]

Actually, many linguists think clicks are very late development because of their complexity. I recommend starting with Wikipedia article about them, it's very good, and then moving to articles about specific languages.

[@philippegiraud723]

I ´ll do it! Thank you

[@Kuikayotl]

Mi lengua nativa es el náhuatl...saludos desde Hidalgo México...y estoy aprendiendo inglés.

[@NL-tq1yr]

Do North west Caucasus Languages next.

[@askitsallen]

Hi sorry for commenting so much.Like I said I am from Namibia(Khoekhoe) we have 4 clicks the /the // the ! And the #

[@s.keikhosro_5555]

Very good pls make a program about persian why u learn taha is it good language?

[@s.keikhosro_5555]

@Ian Meijer yes I saw that but a new one why she is interested in persian because she speaks persian

[@videoreon]

Очень интересно! Меня всегда удивляли эти загадочные койсанские звуки... думаю, примерно так говорили наши далекие предки в каменном веке...

[@polymath6475]

Wonderful video. Don't underestimate the power of haplogroup-linguistic links. Every modern language has many layers, but the evidence is in the words we speak. My favorite is man's oldest most universal technology: five/hand. Starting 70k years ago, Khoisan A haplogroup, Nilo-Saharan B, Tungus-Korean-Japanese-Navajo are C&D indicating widespread peopling of the world, and then E returned to Africa producing Niger-Congo complying with wave theory wiping out the original stock and leaving Nilo, Khoisan, Mande on the fringes with a few isolated long term survivors: Hadza and Sandawe. All these languages have a variation of /KULU/ for five/hand, whereas starting from C, /TANST/ is the main word. Decamillennia later, G emerged and settled the west Caucasus while H emerged to populate all of South Asia as Dravidian /CANT/ (C≈tʃ) and I populated Europe mixing with Neanderthals with /HANT/. Evolving clockwise around the Caucasus and innovating p- initial, J emerged settling north Africa and Iberia mixing with original E languages, hence such diversity as Omotic, Semitic, Chadic. The word for "five" /hamst & shan/ shows pre-Caucasus traces of E stock /tanst/, proof of such mixing, whereas Basque shows ex-Caucasus /planst/ → /bost/. Emerging K haplogroup brought /planskw/ to southeast Asia producing /plam/ evolving to /plima/ and /pnam/ with some modern families dropping the p or simply glottalizing it. This was back when Sundaland wasn't flooded yet and pre-Austronesians had flourishing millet civilization in the Taiwan strait. When multiple floods came, the O escaped in different stages and creolized by intermarrying with the K pygmies here in the Taiwan mountains where I do my research, creating linguistic diversity. You'll still find evidence of earlier C stock for hand /tang/ in Austronesian Malagasy, Javanese where most languages keep p- or shift to k-. Nicobarese word is obviously from earlier C migration though their language was later overwritten as O. Sinitic split the word so /pli/ refers to arm, and /n-s-kw/ → /nkw/ to five, and the shortening of words resulted in tones. This brought new layers of loans to Korean and Japanese. Around the same time in prehistory PQR haplogroups split north into Siberia where /planskw/ became /plisk/ → /pist/ into Turkic, → /piht/ → /wiht/ into Uralic/Yukaghir/Algonquian/Quechua et al, then finally /planskw/ was carried west and mixed with west Caucasians in Ukraine creating a new creole, Indo Euro /pankw/. Meanwhile, a purer non creole pre-PIE survives today in Pakistan called Burushaski, a language with many overlapping strata, so although pre-PIE in nature, their word for five originates from the original Dravidian they spoke tens of thousands of years ago. Later, Indo Euro would spread all of central Asia and India pushing Dravidian to the southern fringes. Later in recent history Siberian Turkic would go west replacing Indo Euro in central Asia and Anatolia. And although the /s/ disappeared in PIE long ago we have related words like fist and phalanx that still have it. The word “hand” is obviously from early European I haplogroup carrying original /hamst, tanst/ genes and doesn't have a PIE root. This is why the migration data helps identify the word histories so well.

[@polymath6475]

Error: I wrote Yukaghir above but I meant Samoyed where it is /plansk/ evolving with an additional s- prefix (later glottalising to h-) in the various languages as se-hlank, so-prik, ha-mplahk, se-mplanka, so-mpela. The rest of Uralic loses or glottalizes medial -s- as viht, vit, vis, wet, öt, whereas Turkic kept the s and lost final -t. Chuvash is interestingly older than all the other ones with pilek, keeping -k and losing -s- completely different from the rest of Uralic and Turkic.

[@chrisganuseb8799]

I'm khoe and it's really impressive.

[@jayaraj5510]

Try to make a vedio on Dravidian language family

[@ZoveRen]

Weird fact: There was an extinct Australian language that had clicks.

[@glenm3712]

Thanks again Julie. As I'm sure you already know, the Zulu language has click sounds too and I've wondered if this didn't evolve as they migrated south. One fascinating little factoid that has had me thinking for decades is the Zulu name for South Africa - Iningizimu Afrika. The word 'iningizimu' means 'many cannibals'. Was this fact being reported back to the main group of migrants by the scouts being sent south, I wonder?

[@Barc112]

Awesome, Glen! Yes, linguists actually explicitly recognise the clicks in the Nguni languages as being 'borrowed', which happened as Ngunis made with contact with, conquered and intermarried with the Khoe, "San" and other people they found as they moved south. And I've wondered the same about "ningizimu", especially because the land just to the south of greater Zululand is now called "the Wild Coast" (i.e. the start of the Eastern Cape as you head down the Indian Ocean coastline)

[@davidekstrand8544]

Could you do a video on Afrikaans?

[@ronaldwilliams1750]

The clicks almost sound like the clicks a fire makes when it is burning a tree.

[@tubebobwil]

I appreciate how you think.

[@WolfgangSourdeau]

It's cute : at 0:45 I hear "African is a huge consonant".

[@ilovesa67]

Love the South African languages

[@RyanDaRizzle]

Do some obscure language like Vedda, Dzongkha, Chukchi, Jarawa, Dhuwal, Tiwi, Enga, Ten'edn, Tlingit, Haida, Purepécha, Huaorani, Mapudungun or Yaghan next!

[@thamizh6461]

*Mam Can you plz explain briefly about Tamil language*

[@abhinandhk9554]

Can you do malayalam in your channel

[@ashkovartomarpal7688]

Wish to watch you talking about Kurdish language . 😁

[@justtiredofallthebs]

The Bantu languages adopted the clicks from the Khoisan languages when they moved down from West Africa.

[@sicko_the_ew]

Each isolated language it's own family, maybe? I've heard that New Guinea has something like a thousand languages, and not many of them are related to one another. I've read that Khoi (the scholars can keep their ever-changing orthographies) means "people" (just like "Bantu" means "people" - and "abeLungu" meant "sea creatures" once upon a time.) So then the Khoi-Khoi are people-people. Normal human beings. And the Khoi-San are people (not sea creatures), but not people-people. They're San people. So what's a San, then? It's a kind of fragrant bush. Might have parasite-control properties or something. I forget which bush it was, but I've read of a bush that was known as the "bushman bush" - the bush they used cosmetically. So Khoi-San? Bush-person - Bushman. But this can be reporpoised into something nice and censorious, where if you refer to Bushmen as Bushmen, you can be deemed to be doing so out of prejudice against them - because there's something terrible about being associated with a bush or the bush, apparently. There's Bushman rock art all over Southern Africa - including places where there are no historical records of living Bushmen. That means they were either killed in wars, driven away, or assimilated. It's probably a combination of those. (So there's a quite simple explanation for why there are a few clicks in Zulu and Xhosa). I imagine (and am not credible, so don't quote this, you'll be laughed at) that hunting people live "walkabout" lives. They stay in one general area, they move to known seasonal food sources, and at the end of the year they're back where they started. I would guess that they spend less time killing each other than do e.g. cow-keeping-and-cattle-raiding people, and the don't invade each others lands. That would result in thousands of little languages that are "each-their-own-family" - as there's no large scale reshuffling of people. (I think Australia's aboriginals also have a lot of different and unique languages? It'll be interesting to hear about it when you get to them). As soon as you manage to teach your prey to trust you enough to allow you to kill them without too much fuss (get livestock), one thing you need to do is keep moving to new pasture. You have tons more food, but if you get hit with a drought there are less alternatives to fall back on, for instance. And you'll get raided. And you'll take revenge. And then you'll go raiding. Your reach is going to expand, and the reach of your "enemies" (new thing? probably not, I suppose) is going to likewise expand. If I shoot the antelope you had your eye on, you just go and shoot another one; if I slaughter your cow, you're going to slaughter my children.