ǀXam language

ǀXam
Region	South Africa, Lesotho
Extinct	19??
Language family	Tuu ǃKwi ǀXam
Language codes
ISO 639-3	xam
Glottolog	xamm1241

ǀXam (/Kham) (English pronunciation: /ˈkɑːm/), or ǀXam Kaǃkʼe, is an extinct Khoisan language of South Africa, part of the ǃkwi language group. It is closely related to the moribund Nǁng language.

ǀXam was used for the South African motto adopted on 27 April 2000,

ǃke e: ǀxarra ǁke

being diverse people unite or, on a collective scale, Unity in Diversity. However, it is not known if that phrase would have been idiomatic in ǀXam. Because it is extinct, ǀXam is not one of the eleven official languages of South Africa.

The pipe at the beginning of the name "ǀXam" represents a dental click, like the English interjection tsk, tsk! used to express pity or shame. The ⟨x⟩ denotes a voiceless velar fricative. There is little variation in rendering the name, compared to other Khoisan languages. Besides the simple orthographic variant ǀKham, there is a different grammatical form, ǀKhuai

Much of the scholarly work on the ǀXam language was performed by Wilhelm Bleek, a German linguist of the 19th century. He had studied a variety of ǀXam spoken at Achterveld, and (with Lucy Lloyd) another spoken at Strandberg and Katkop.

External links

• Bleek and Lloyd Archive of ǀxam and ǃkun texts online
• A crowdsourcing project to transcribe the Bleek and Lloyd Collection
• South African coat of arms