English

Proper noun

ǃKung

1. A group of Bushmen people living in the Kalahari Desert.
   • 1992, Richard B. Lee, Work, Sexuality, and Aging Among ǃKung Women, in In her prime: new views of middle-aged women (Virginia Kerns, Judith K. Brown), page 39:

     Given the early sex play, I will hazard a guess that there are few ǃKung virgins, male or female, at puberty.

   • 1996, Nicholas Blurton Jones, Kristen Hawkes, James F. O'Connell, The global process and local ecology, in Cultural Diversity Among Twentieth-Century Foragers (edited by Susan Kent), page 179:

     […] and that ǃKung women are married so young because ǃKung men try to marry them before the Bantu do!

   • 2001, Jenny Diski, "Oh, Andrea Dworkin", London Review of Books, XXIII.17:

     From the peaceful and gentle ǃKung San Bushmen to the urbane and civilised Montaigne, from folk legend to Freudian complex, from Medusa to the Blue Angel, men blame women for their discomforts and disappointments.

   • c. 2001–2007, Archaeology at the Millennium: A Sourcebook (Gary M. Feinman, T. Douglas Price), page 155:

     The San-speaking ǃKung of southern Africa are nearly always chosen to exemplify the forager strategy.

   • 2008, The cultural geography reader (Timothy Oakes, Patricia Lynn Price), page 65:

     The San-speaking ǃKung of Botswana (the “Bushmen” of old) are presented as a distinct, “other,” and apparently primordial “people.”

   • 2009, Anthropology For Dummies (ISBN 0470507691), edited by Cameron M. Smith with Evan T. Davies:

     (Once known as "Bushmen," the ǃKung, today, are also known as the Nyae Nyae or the Jo-hoansi, pronounced zhu-wahnsi.) The ǃ symbol in the ǃKung language is a click sound made with the tongue.

   • For more examples of usage of this term, see Citations:ǃKung.
2. A Khoisan language spoken in Namibia, Angola, and South Africa, famous for its click consonants.
   • 1973, in The Second Wave, volume 3, page 17:

     *The ǃ in the word ǃKung is an orthographic symbol denoting a "click" sound. The ǃKung language, aside from sharing many of the same sounds found in all languages, has four distinct clicks […]

   • 1994, The Aging Experience: diversity and commonality across cultures (Jennie Keith), page 24:

     Harpending spoke ǃKung because of his previous fieldwork in the area, […]

   • 2007, Elizabeth Marshall Thomas, The Old Way: A Story of the First People, page 286:

     None of the ideologues spoke ǃKung, […]

   • 2002, New horizons for the San: participatory action research with San communities in Northern Namibia (Dhyani J. Berger, Elke Zimprich), page 22:

     In Epembe, Oonduda and Uusilo very few people could understand and even fewer could speak ǃKung. They expressed their sorrow at this loss.

Synonyms

• (people): ǃXun
• (language): ǃXun

Translations

See also

• Wiktionary's coverage of ǃKung terms
• 'Akhoe
• Vasekela
• ǃXóõ

Anagrams

• gunk

References

1. ↑ “ǃKung” in Dictionary.com Unabridged, v1.0.1, Lexico Publishing Group, 2006.
2. 1 2 “ǃKung” in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, Merriam-Webster Online.

• Alan Barnard, Hunters and Herders of Southern Africa (1992), page xxii: Finally, it may be of interest to the non-specialist that the pronunciation of clicks in ethnic group names is entirely optional when speaking a non-Khoisan language. Acceptable anglicizations may be produced either by articulating a non-click sound of approximately the same phonological position (e.g. p for ʘ, t for ǀ or ǂ, k for ǁ or ǃ), or by ignoring the click entirely and simply pronouncing the release followed by the remainder of the word. When speaking English, I myself say Kung for 'ǃKung', Gwi for 'Gǀwi', and Gana for 'Gǁana'. […] Ko for 'ǃXõ', Kam for 'ǀXam' […]