Documenting language and culture inendangered social practices
ǂAkhoe HaiǁomBetween 2003 and 2010 research for thisproject (funded by the DoBeS programme ofthe Volkswagen Foundation) was carried outunder the leadership of Prof. S. Levinson ofthe Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguis‐tics in Nijmegen.
CONTACT ADDRESSProf. Dr. Thomas WidlokInstitut für AfrikanistikUniversität zu Köln50923 Köln, Germanytwidlok@uni‐[email protected]‐[email protected]://www.mpi.nl/DOBES/projects/akhoe/
The project and its results
Going through the electronic database with ǂAkhoe Haiǁomspeakers. Maais Goboses, Oahetamas Goboses, and ThomasWidlok
Transcribing digitalized video‐tapes of everyday conversation.ǀKhomxa Khoeda Junior Primary School at Mangetti‐West(ǀGomais). From left to right: Gertie Hoymann, Linda Uises,Mariane Kheimses, Christian Rapold
The peopleThere are several thousand Haiǁom speakersin northern Namibia but less than 200 ǂA‐khoe Haiǁom in the Oshikoto region maintaina distinct profile with cultural features suchas healing trance dances, intensive use ofwild plant and insect food, their own kinshipand naming system, frequent storytelling, alandscape‐term system of spatial orientationand elaborate sharing practices. Our docu‐mentation project includes samples of thebroad range of ǂAkhoe Haiǁom cultural andlinguistic features. It also includes a recordof the interaction with people in the field.Widlok, Th. (forthcoming) The ArchiveStrikes Back: Effects of Online Digital Lan‐guage Archiving on Research Relations andProperty Rights. In: Oral Literature in theDigital Age: Archiving Orality and Connectingwith Communities. Available under http://www.openbookpublishers.com/product/186Widlok, Th. 2009. "Die elektronischeZukunft der Ethnografie und ihre Gegenwartin der Dokumentation bedrohter Sprachen."In: I. Dietzsch, W. Kaschuba, L. Scholze‐Irr‐litz (eds.), Horizonte ethnografischen Wis‐sens. Eine Bestandsaufnahme. Berlin:Böhlau, pp. 203‐220.
The link between language and cultureǂAkhoe Haiǁom is a Central Khoisan lan‐guage and a member of the Khoekhoegowabdialect continuum. Like the other Khoisanlanguages ǂAkhoe Haiǁom has click soundswhich are represented in writing by specialsigns:ǀ represents the dental click (resembling thefricative sound of disapproval in many lan‐guages)ǁ represents the lateral click (previously of‐ten rendered as k as in the Name Haikom)! represents the alveolar click (resemblingthe sound of a bottle being uncorked)ǂ represents the palatal click (resembling aclapping sound)ǂAkhoe Haiǁom is threatened not only dueto the small size of the community ofspeakers and a low reputation of the lan‐guage and its speakers but also because onlythe other, standardized variants of Khoe‐
khoegowab receive the attention of schoolteachers and language planners.The unique features of the ǂAkhoe Haiǁomlanguage are tightly connected with partic‐ular cultural practices such as sharing.Speakers have, for instance, a preferencefor less coercive and less restrictive ques‐tion forms which underlines individualautonomy. Requests are not consideredface‐threatening and people make them‐selves conspicuously present (part of apractice called ǂgona) and thus, withoutverbal interaction, they initiate sharingthrough a silent demand.
From the video record: a silent ǂgona demand (left) initiatingsharing in response (right)
For more details see:Hoymann, G. 2010. Questions and responsesin ǂAkhoe Haiǁom. Journal of Pragmatics42:10 p. 2726‐2740.Rapold, C. 2011. Semantics of Khoekhoereciprocal constructions. In: N. Evans, A.Gaby, S. Levinson and A. Majid (eds.), Re‐ciprocals and semantic typology. (Typologi‐cal Studies in Language). Amsterdam: JohnBenjamins. p. 61‐74.Widlok, Th. 2010. Sharing as a culturalinnovation. In: M. Benz (ed.): The Principleof Sharing. Berlin: ex oriente, p. 91‐104.Widlok, Th. (in press) Sharing: allowingothers to take what is valued. Special Issueof HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory.
In this period the three main researchersThomas Widlok, Christian Rapold and GertieHoymann compiled the ǂAkhoe Haiǁom cor‐pus. The corpus is accessible online(http://www.mpi.nl/DOBES/projects/akhoe/)and local copies of representative datasamples are also available at the archive ofthe University of Namibia, the NationalArchive of Namibia, and at the WorkingGroup of Indigenous Minorities in SouthernAfrica (WIMSA) as our partner organizationsin Namibia.The project researchers continue to publishresults gained from working with this cor‐pus. Selected joint publications are:Rapold, C. and Th. Widlok 2008. "Dimen‐sions of variability in Northern Khoekhoelanguage and culture" In: K. Sadr and F.‐X.Fauvelle‐Aymar (eds.), The transition tofood production in southern Africa. SouthernAfrican Humanities 20:133‐161.Widlok, Th., C. Rapold, G. Hoymann 2008."Multimedia analysis in documentation pro‐jects: Kinship, interrogatives and reciprocalsin ǂAkhoe Haiǁom" In: K. David Harrison, D.S. Rood and A. Dwyer (eds.), Lessons fromdocumented endangered languages. (Typo‐logical Studies in Language, 78). pp. 355‐370. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Widlok, Th. 2013. "Haiǁom Phonology"."Haiǁom Morphology". "Haiǁom Syntax".Haiǁom Language Contact". "Haiǁom Socio‐linguistics". In: R. Vossen (ed.), The KhoesanLanguages. London: Routledge
ǂAkhoe Haiǁom (grand)mother tongue education: !Gamekhas!Nabaris and her granddaughter ǀNabaros
