The language with the most sounds in the world - !Xóõ

The Taa language, also known !Xóõ is  a language spoken around the border of Botswana and Namibia and it is famous for perhaps  the most absurd phonemic inventory in the world. With counts of between 80 to 160 consonants, many  of which are click sounds such as [click sounds], approximately 30 vowels and between 2 and 4 tones, the !Xóõ language is a true testament  to the magic that is human communication. Before we get into it, here’s a short clip  of what the language actually sounds like:

In this video we will talk about the  !Xóõ language in terms of classification, touching a tiny bit on the culture of the people  who speak it. Then we’ll move on to talk about the main reason I wanted to make this video which  is the insane sound inventory of the language, and we’ll conclude with briefly discussing some  interesting aspects of the grammar and a little bit on the main researcher who spent decades  of his life studying this wonderful language. So without further ado, let’s get

started. First off - classification: where does  !Xóõ come from and where is it spoken? Back in the day, linguist Joseph Greenberg  tried to categorize all African languages into a few macro-language families,  one of which being the Khoisan language family. Today, Khoisan, as a language family, is  widely rejected as a linguistic classification, but the term is still used today  as a general term of convenience, mostly to demonstrate the geographical  distribution of “the languages that have

click consonants and do not belong  to other African language families”. Here we can see, in yellow, the general  areas where “Khoisan” languages are spoken. Important side note - just because  2 languages have similar sounds, even if they’re as exotic  and rare as click consonants, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they are  immediately related to each other. Grammar and genealogical relationships also have to be  considered when classifying language families. Which is exactly why, today, the

former  “Khoisan” languages are split into 3 small language families, the Khoe-Kwadi, Kx’a  and Tuu, all spoken around southwestern-ish Africa as well as 2 language isolates  - Sandawe and Hadza spoken in Tanzania. The topic of today’s video, the !Xóõ language  and its dialects are pretty much the last surviving members of the Tuu language family -  there’s another “live” one called Nǁng, but as of 2021, from what I could find, there’s only really  1 surviving native speaker, so it’s probably

gonna be gone very soon unfortunately,  leaving just !Xóõ and its dialects. While we’re on the topic, I should  mention that there are a bunch of other languages that have click consonants  that were never classified as “Khoisan”. These are the most famous southern Bantu  languages that you’ve probably heard of, such as Zulu, Xhosa, Ndebele, Swazi, and  a bunch of others. There’s also a South Cushitic language called Dahalo  spoken in Kenya which has a few clicks but they’re quite rare in the

  language, and then there’s also Damin, which is an extinct ceremonial language of the  Lardil and Yangkaal people of Northern Australia, which was the only click language in the world  outside of Africa, until it went extinct that is, which… Story for another time, I can’t  keep getting off topic - back to !Xóõ. So when it comes to people, those who speak  !Xóõ belong to a broadly-defined ethnic group called the San Peoples, also known  as Basarwa, also known as the Bushmen. All together,

these are people  who speak Khoe-Kwadi, Kx’a and Tuu languages mentioned previously, and most  of them are hunter-gatherer societies, speculated to be some of the oldest  surviving cultures in the world. Those people don’t really have a collective  word for the entire group and don’t think of themselves as a unified people, but are  rather divided into various clans and nations. The terms “San”, “Basarwa” and  “Bushmen” are generalizations and nowadays are seen as derogatory, and  the people the

mselves would prefer if you refer to them by their individual nations  rather than grouping them all together. I’m assuming that it’s the same in  the case of the !Xóõ specifically, but… keyword here is “assuming”, I couldn’t  really tell you because there’s really not much information that I could find on the individual  societies separated by linguistic boundaries. All of the studies and articles that  I’ve read in preparation for this video focus on the linguistics of the spoken  languages

rather than the anthropology and sociology of the people groups, and only  reference the collective “Bushmen”, so… Either way, these people are oftentimes involved  in hunting wild game, as well as foraging food. They use spears, as well as bows and arrows, sometimes even with poison  gathered from beetle larvae. Leisure is very important in these societies  and many of them have a lot of complex ritual dances, cave paintings, music, games  and a myriad of cultural activities, which you would ha

ve to learn if  you ever want to be fluent in the language. Can’t be fluent in a language  without being fluent in the culture. Even though men and women do  have different roles in society, when it comes to decision making - many of the  tribes seem to have relative equality between the genders. Certain tribes have chiefs,  usually a man, but at the same time, a woman may be the leader of her family group,  and both sides are taken into account. These are all very basic things from  the lives o

f the peoples of the region, including those who speak !Xóõ, but again, I  want to emphasize that it heavily varies from community to community and there’s a lot more  that goes into that beyond what I just said. In any case, let’s move on to  the linguistics of the language. First of all - phonetics and phonology, which, in  my eyes, are the coolest aspects of this language. So, when it comes to vowels, there  are 5 basic vowels - a, e, i, o, u. However, there are 5 phonation types per vowel.

Phonation basically refers to how much you  constrict your vocal cords and how much they vibrate when pronouncing a certain  speech sound, modifying the airstream, which leads to a difference in how a sound sounds. The 5 phonation types in !Xóõ are modal voice,  glottalized, breathy voice, pharyngealized and strident. I’ll now try to demonstrate the  difference of how this sounds, probably not super accurately, but bear with me: something along those lines, basically. Additionally, there is n

asalization  of vowels, so the difference between a and [a]. All of this brings the total numbers  of distinct vowels to approximately 30. I say approximately because there is variation  between certain dialects and there’s a whole lot more that goes into it like phonotactic  restrictions, syllable onset, context, etc. In the introduction I also mentioned that  there are between 2 and 4 tones. Thing is, some studies from the 70s, 80s and 90s claim  4 tones But other, more recent studies I’ve see

n claim to have re-examined this  and that there are only really 2 tones, and the reason for this discrepancy has to do with morae,  which is a unit of time equal to or shorter than a syllable. Tones are a component of grammar,  meaning it influences the agreement between nouns, verbs and the like, and so they basically looked  at different phrases and how the pitch contours vary and the conclusion they came to is that  it’s likely just 2 tones that have variation in length and intonation in cer

tain cases, but  it’s not really 4 distinct tones. In any case, there is a really good study on this  by Christfried Naumann, link in the description, please check it out. The bottom line  is that tones are cool and languages with a crazy amount of vowels and consonants that also have  tones are even cooler because of how difficult it would be to learn this. The way I look at  languages is more difficult/more unusual = more awesome, and I have a hard time not talking about  it to everyone, which

is why I make these videos. But anyway, speaking of  consonants, let’s talk about them. In the beginning I said that there are  between 80 to 160 consonants. For reference, Standard British English has 24 consonants. So how is this possible and what’s with this  crazy difference in counting them? In order to understand this, we first  need to understand the types of consonants that !Xóõ has. (By the way, there are 2  main dialect clusters, Eastern and Western, which have slightly different co

unts, but  for the sake of simplicity, I’ll be showing specifically the Western dialect. Still 95% of  the stuff I’ll talk about applies to both, but the IPA chart I’ll show at the end of the section  applies to the Western dialect in particular.) !Xóõ has 3 types of consonants, in other words, it utilizes 3 airstream  mechanisms to produce consonants. These are 1) pulmonic egressive, which are  the sounds we are all used to, every single language in the world has these, it’s just your  regula

r consonants exactly like you think of them. Egressive basically means breathing out;  we breathe out when we produce these sounds. The second type is 2) glottalic egressive, also known as ejectives. These are rarer across  the world, and English doesn’t really have them, but they shouldn’t be too difficult to  pronounce. As the name “ejective” suggests, you basically “eject” your regular consonants  with a bit more umpf than usual. So for example, regular t, ejective t’, regular p, ejective  p’

, regular k, ejective k’ and so on. And the third type of consonants that  !Xóõ has are 3) Lingual/velar ingressive, also known as the click consonants.  While egressive means breathing out, ingressive means we breathe in when  producing these sounds. There are 5 basic types of click consonants  and I’ll start with the ones that most English speakers should at least be familiar with - the  dental click (ǀ) which is sort of like when you disapprove of something your kid did. Then there’s  the l

ateral click (ǁ) which is how you call a horse, next is the alveolar click (ǃ) which is how  some imitate a horse running, or a clock ticking, we used to pretend to play ping pong like this  in school. The fourth type is the palatal click (ǂ) which may sound very similar to the dental  click, but it’s different - instead of having your tongue touch the front of your mouth and  your teeth, it’s higher than that, you just sort of press your tongue flat against the roof  of your mouth. And the fina

l type of click is the bilabial click (ʘ) and it’s basically  just your lips touching off of each other. Keep in mind, there are a few other types  of clicks out there in other languages, but these are the five basic types present  in the !Xóõ language. By the way, about 70% of the words in the dictionary begin with a click. That is one the coolest and  mind-blowing statistics I’ve read all day. Anyway, I know that was a ton of information, but now you should have an understanding of  all the

different basic types of consonants that this language has… but don’t worry,  because it’s way more complicated than that. Additionally, consonants may have a few other  properties that would make them different from the basic types, in other words, that  would turn them into different phonemes able to change the meaning of a word or sentence.  There are a few other things that I think are important to define before we carry on - Aspiration is when a burst of breath accompanies a consonant, eith

er before or  after so for example K and kh, tak takh. Nasalization, which we already  talked about in terms of vowels, and it’s pretty similar in terms  of consonants. It’s when some air escapes through the nose rather than  the mouth when producing a consonant. And voiced vs voiceless. This has to do with the  vocal cords vibrating during the production of the consonant. If you touch your throat here,  try saying S and then Z and compare. That’s how you distinguish voiced and voiceless consona

nts  p vs b, t vs d. The Vocal cords don’t vibrate when you say S, so the S is voiceless. The vocal  cords vibrate when you say Z, so the Z is voiced. And now let’s have a look at the full IPA  chart of the consonants of !Xóõ so that you can more easily visualize how all of this is  structured, and I’ll try to walk you through it. First, I have highlighted all the  boxes that include your regular pulmonic egressive consonants  that all of us know and love. Next, here are the regular ejectives 

which we might not know and love, but they shouldn’t be that alien for us to use. And lastly, here are the clicks. Now, if you’ll  notice, there are a whole lot more than just 5 like we discussed earlier, actually 43 to  be exact. Now, if you’re like me, your first question should be what the hell? Here are the  plain ordinary ones which we discussed. Turns out, in this language, clicks are also able to be  voiced, they can be aspirated both voiced and voiceless, you can have a click that is al

so an  ejective that is also either voiced or voiceless, clicks can also be nasalized voiced and  voiceless, I didn’t think that was possible, but ok, and they can be glottalized. All  together, this chart shows a grand total of 87 consonants all together. Isn’t this just  the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen? And guess what - we’re still not done  yet. I just showed you 87 consonants, what about the other 80, in order to get to the  160 number mentioned in the beginning? Well, this is wher

e we enter Cluster territory. Because 87 consonants is obviously too little, speakers of !Xóõ decided to just jumble a bunch  of them together, creating consonant clusters. Let me present to you a separate IPA chart that  illustrates those clusters. We’re not gonna spend too much time on this because my Indo-European  brain is starting to get overloaded and refuses to believe that humans actually speak like  this. But anyway, let’s look at a few examples, you got the easy ones here, which are

basically  just a t and x or the d z x. But the vast majority are absolutely ridiculous. Look at this thing  for example, a voiced lateral click combined with a uvular affricate voiceless ejective. I  can’t even begin to imagine how in the world that’s possible to pronounce but I’m gonna try -  [tries], or let’s try this - a nasalized voiced bilabial click combined with an aspirated H, like  is that double aspiration? Let’s see here [tries]. There are a total of 77 of them in this chart. Now, be

cause these are consonant clusters are not  basic consonants on their own, you can see how the count of the total amount of consonants can be  so varied over decades of research, especially since for a lot of these, it’s impossible to hear  the difference for the untrained ear, especially especially when you’re recording a native speaker  speaking at normal speed and you, as a researcher, don’t speak the language. You have to analyze  this stuff under a microscope to be able to hear the differen

ce between the phonemes. Consonant  clusters? More like cluster headaches, amiright? Let’s summarize, with 87 consonants (43 of which  are clicks), and 77 consonant clusters most of which also include a click. According to this  paper by Christfried Naumann, which itself is a summary of a ton of different studies spanning  decades, if you wanted to make the title of this video as clickbaity as possible and count  consonant clusters as separate consonants, that’s how you get the figure of 164  co

nsonants in the !Xóõ language. If you ask me personally, I think we should  keep consonants and consonant clusters separate, but even then, 87 consonants not counting  the clusters. I don’t think there has ever been or ever will be another natural human  language that reaches this level of phonemic and phonological absurdity. Nobody even comes close! There is the age-old famous question - Which  language is the most difficult in the world? I’ve always hated this question, it’s such a  stupid q

uestion, because the only correct answer is “it depends; it depends on what your native  language is”. Also difficult in what way? Grammar, pronunciation, writing? It’s almost  not worth thinking about. However, if I absolutely had to pick 1 language  as a candidate for that title, at least specifically for the pronunciation  category, I would pick !Xóõ. Ok moving on, now let’s briefly, and I mean very  briefly, talk about the grammar of the language and some interesting stuff I’ve read about

it  - sounds are fun, but how do sentences work? In this part we will have to touch on dialects a  little bit because it does differ depending on the dialect, but first we’ll talk in general terms,  and then when I show you some examples, where I’ll actually be saying these sentences. Apologies for  pronunciation, but let’s be honest here, it’s not like you have any reference, or like you’re gonna  find anyone else trying to pronounce this stuff. I love trying to pronounce weird languages when I

  don’t know what’s going on, obviously I practice and try to make it accurate,so I guess you’re stuck with me. So first of all, the general word  order is SVO, much like in English. What’s not like in English is a rather  unusual feature that is described as “verbal cross-reference is rather  of the object than of the subject” Let’s take an example: here are 2 sentences,  the first one [phrase] means “I see one big sheep”, the second sentence [phrase] one means “I see big  sheep” as in a few bi

g sheep. The verb here is to see, which is NIa. In the  first sentence, because we’re talking about 1 sheep, the end is e. In the second sentence,  because we’re talking about multiple sheep, the verb ending changes from e to an. And the  adjectives and numbers that follow the noun also have the same ending as the verb. Obviously the  nouns a sheep and sheep are also different, but to me the unusual part here is that the verb changes.  In English when we say I see a sheep and I see many sheep, w

e’re doing the same action - seeing.  We’re seeing different things, but the action is still the same, so why would the verb change.  So that’s an interesting little quirk, I think. Next let’s talk about genders, or grammatical  categories. This would probably be the most difficult part of learning the grammar, because  they seem to work in a very arbitrary way. Usually, you can tell what grammatical category a noun belongs to either by the  way it sounds, or by what it is. Some languages with a

lot of grammatical  categories classify stuff into Human stuff, animals, plants, vessels, spiritual, abstract  stuff and so on, that way, while of course it takes practice and learning more about  the culture to be able to grasp it, it’s more or less obvious what  category a noun would belong to. In !Xóõ that doesn’t seem to be the case.  According to Roland Kießling in his paper on noun classification, he states: “The assignment of  a noun to a certain gender is often not directly recoverabl

e, neither from its meaning nor its  form. This could be seen in [...] three sets of nouns with nearly the same form, in particular  with the same vowel in the second mora, but assigned to different genders. And  [...] three sets of nouns belonging to the same semantic domain, including a case of  synonymy, but assigned to different genders.” Basically this is gonna take a lot of trial  and error and pure memorization. The Western dialect has about 6 or 7 genders, while the  Eastern dialect seem

s to have at least 9. Here are just a few examples of what the general categories seem to be: 1) mass nouns and substances 2) artifacts and tools (miscellaneous animals and  plants, body parts, insects, disease, atmosphere and environment, reptiles, containers, and humans) 3) excretions associated with body parts, offspring, parts of plants,  animals, spatial relations… 4) place names, personal names, nouns of  quality, animals, amorphous entities without inherent shape such as liquids and body

fluids Also there are a bunch of other categories where a bunch of random stuff overlaps, it  also heavily depends on the context when you’re speaking and honestly it’s a complete  mess, at least to my Indo-European brain. If you’d like to see a full list  of approximately how this works, I recommend you check out Roland Kießling’s paper,  the link of which is gonna be in the description. This gets even more complicated  when comparing different dialects: Here are two phrases from the  Western d

ialect, the first one [phrase] it’s people,  I see them. And the second phrase, [phrase], which means it's dogs, I see them. So again, The verb here is to see is, at the end  of both sentences. In the first phrase, the ending is u, which corresponds  to the grammatical category that the word for people is in, while in the second  phrase, the ending changes to an, because the word for dogs is in a different grammatical  category, so it will be different from people. However, when we look at the s

ame  phrases in the Eastern dialect, you’ll notice something is different. so, the same two sentences in the Eastern dialect, the first being [phrase] it’s people I see them, and the second phrase, [phrase] it's dogs I see them. the first phrase, it's people, I see them, is almost the same. with the ending being u, nlau, which corresponds to the grammatical category of people. However, the second phrase It’s dogs I see them, instead of having a different ending, the ending  is exactly the same a

s in the first phrase. Turns out, in the eastern dialect, people and dogs are  of the same genders, or the same grammatical category. so the ending wouldn’t be the same for both of them. Which is really cool, but really confusing. Anyway, I know I keep saying this over and over  again, but there’s a whole lot that goes into it, it’s incredibly complex and I’m  probably not qualified to be explaining this. So please do check out  the actual studies in the description. And this is where we begin t

o reach  the conclusion of today’s video. There have been a lot of people working tirelessly  over the years to document, analyze and understand this exotic language and the people who speak it.  However, there is one particular person, without whom none of it would be possible - a South  African linguist by the name of Anthony Traill. He went on nearly 100 expeditions over  35 years to try to learn and document the !Xóõ language. He published countless  papers on it, including the Dictionary.

Apart from English and !Xóõ, he also  spoke Zulu, Tsonga, Tswana and Afrikaans. Additionally I also read this about him:  “Traill developed a lump on his larynx after speaking the language for a long time,  which is typical of adult native !Xóõ speakers, but not children, a testament to  his time spent with the language.” That sounded almost unbelievable to me, but  after a bit of googling and seeing this same fact pop up in multiple articles and even a  scientific study, it turns out it’s pr

obably true. Speaking this language isn’t just  insane from a phonological standpoint, it also quite literally takes a physical toll  on your body - you develop an actual lump on your larynx from speaking it. That is madness, but  also so damn cool, and pretty metal if you ask me. Before we finish off the video, I would like to  read you a paragraph from the acknowledgements section of the dictionary written by  Anthony Traill. I think it perfectly illustrates what it takes for a project  such a

s this to be a person’s life’s work, as well as how incredibly humble he was, and as a  linguist myself, this is what I aspire to be like. “I owe my greatest debt to all the !Xóõ who have  patiently taught me their language and instructed me in many aspects of their culture. They have  been expert and inspiring teachers who have led me enthusiastically into their linguistic, physical  and mental worlds. They will never know how compellingly fascinating this education has been  for me. [...] I ha

ve learnt most from Bōroǁxáo who has grown older with me through twenty three years  of fieldwork. He has been, as he would say, the “head teacher” of an unconventional school. He has  been a brilliant teacher with a wonderful sense of humour and an uncanny understanding of the limits  of the western mind.” - Anthony Traill, 1994. He goes on to thank many many  many more people and listing every way that all of them helped  in the creation of the dictionary, and it is quite touching to read.  It

is an enormous accomplishment. In any case, this is where  our story comes to an end. If you come from a community that speaks an  endangered language, please, keep speaking it, keep living it, and pass it on to the  next generation, because in the vast, vast majority of cases, once  it’s gone, it’s gone forever. And if you’re simply interested in  learning a language, any language at all, even !Xóõ, then just do it. Remember,  there is no such thing as a “useless” language and anyone who tells

you otherwise  is wrong, and you shouldn’t listen to them. If you made it this far, I want to thank you so  much for watching, I hope you enjoyed the video and learned something new, and I wish  you a great day and a wonderful night. And now enjoy an outro of  me reading a story in !Xóõ.