This is John Kennedy with another Postcard from Abroad from the University of Kansas.
If you think rolling your R’s is impressive, think again! With 100 consonants, five distinct kinds of clicks and multiple tones, the Taa language spoken by a few thousand people in southern Africa is believed to have the largest sound inventory of any language in the world. Taa, which means ‘human being’, is part of the Khoisan language group spoken in Botswana, Namibia, and South Africa. Khoisan languages have a prevalence of click consonants, and some were adopted into neighboring Bantu languages such as Xhosa, a South African language made popular in the United States by native-speaker Trevor Noah from The Daily Show. So, give some clicks a try, such as the common “tsk tsk” in English, to spice up your communication strategy!
With thanks to Charlotte Kukundakwe from the Kansas African Studies Center for this text, this is John Kennedy. Wish you were here.
