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'Clicks' are stops articulated with two closures in the oral cavity. The pocket of air enclosed between these two closures is rarefied by a sucking action of the tongue. (That is, they have a velaric/lingual ingressive airstream mechanism.) The release of the forward closure produces what may be the loudest consonants in the language, although in some languages such as Hadza, clicks can be more subtle and may even be mistaken for ejective stops. Clicks appear more stop-like or more affricate-like depending on their place of articulation: Generally clicks involving an apical alveolar or laminal postalveolar closure are acoustically abrupt and sharp, like stops, while bilabial, dental, and lateral clicks typically have longer and acoustically noisier releases that are more like affricates.

Contents

Distribution

Types of clicks

Transcription

Places of articulation

Names found in the literature

Manners of articulation

Click genesis and click loss

References

See also

External links

Distribution

Main articles: Click language

Clicks occur in all three Khoisan language families of southern Africa as well as in several neighbouring Bantu languages which borrowed them from Khoisan languages, such as Nguni (Zulu, Xhosa, Swazi, Phuthi and Ndebele, and the Zulu-based pidgin Fanagalo), Sesotho, Yeyi of Botswana, and the Mbukushu, Kwangali, and Gciriku languages of the Caprivi Strip. Clicks also occur in the Sandawe and Hadza languages of Tanzania, as well as in Dahalo, an endangered South Cushitic language of Kenya, which may retain them from an episode of language shift. The only non-African language known to employ clicks as regular speech sounds is Damin, a ritual code used by speakers of Lardil in Australia. One of the clicks in Damin is actually an ''egressive'' click, using the tongue to compress the air in the mouth for an outward (egressive) "spurt".
The Southern African Khoisan languages only utilize root-initial clicks. Hadza, Sandawe, and several of the Bantu languages also allow syllable-initial clicks within roots, but in no known language does a click close a syllable or end a word.
English and many other languages may use clicks in interjections, such as the dental "tsk-tsk" sound used to express disapproval, or the lateral click used with horses. In Ningdu Chinese, flapped nasal clicks are used in nursery rhymes, and in Persian a click accompanied by tipping the head upwards signifies "no". Clicks will occasionally turn up elsewhere, as in the special registers twins sometimes develop with each other.

Types of clicks

As noted above, clicks necessarily involve at least two closures: an anterior articulation which has traditionally been represented by the special click symbol in the IPA, and a posterior articulation which has been traditionally described as oral or nasal, voiced or voiceless, etc. (It's quite easy to pronounce a nasal click, since while maintaining the double oral closure you're free to breathe through the nose. In fact, these are easier to pronounce for many people than oral clicks.) The literature also describes a contrast between velar and uvular rear articulations for some languages. However, recent work has shown that for languages which make this distinction, all clicks have a uvular, or even pharyngeal, rear closure, and that the clicks explicitly described as uvular are in fact click-pulmonic consonant clusters/contours with two release bursts. In the case of "velar" clicks in these languages, there is only a single release burst, that of the forward click release, and the release of the rear articulation isn't audible.
Nonetheless, in most of the literature the stated place of the click is the anterior articulation (called the ''release'' or ''influx),'' while the manner is ascribed to the posterior articulation (called the ''accompaniment'' or ''efflux),'' as in a "nasal dental click".
There are numerous manners of clicks, some of them quite daunting. These include what has been described as voiceless, voiced, aspirate, breathy voiced, nasal, voiceless nasal, breathy voiced nasal, glottalized, voiceless nasal glottalized, affricate, ejective affricate, prevoiced, prenasalized, and others as well, including extremely complex combinations such as a voiced velar click followed by voiceless affricated ejective, , and a velar ejective click followed by uvular ejective, (Ladefoged and Maddieson, 1996). However, some of these may be consonant clusters rather than individual segments.
The size of click inventories ranges from as few as four for the Dahalo language of Kenya, to dozens in the Juu and Tuu languages (Northern and Southern Khoisan), and perhaps over a hundred, depending on how they're analysed, in ǃXóõ (Ladefoged and Maddieson, 1996). In the latter language, over 70% of words begin with a click.

Transcription

The five click releases with dedicated symbols in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) are bilabial , dental , palato-alveolar or "palatal" , (post)alveolar or "retroflex" , and alveolar lateral . The retroflex and palatal releases are "abrupt"; that is, they are sharp popping sounds with little frication (turbulent airflow). The bilabial, dental, and lateral releases, on the other hand, are "noisy": they are longer, lip- or tooth-sucking sounds with turbulent airflow, and are sometimes called affricates. (This applies to the forward articulation; both may also have either an affricate or non-affricate rear articulation as well.) The apical releases, and , are sometimes called "grave", because their pitch is dominated by low frequencies; while the laminal releases, and , are sometimes called "acute", because they are dominated by high frequencies. (At least in the Nǀu language, this is associated with a difference in the placement of the rear articulation: "grave" clicks are uvular, whereas "acute" clicks are pharyngeal.) Thus the alveolar click sounds something like a cork pulled from a bottle (a low-pitch pop), at least in Xhosa; while the dental click is like English ''tsk! tsk!,'' a high-pitched sucking on the incisors. The lateral clicks are pronounced by sucking on the molars of one or both sides. The bilabial click is different from what many people associate with a kiss: the lips are pressed more-or-less flat together, as they are for a [p] or an [m], not rounded as they are for a [w].
The IPA came up with a set of Latin-based symbols for these sounds, but they were never much used, and were eventually given up for the Khoisanist symbols:

symbol	bilabial	dental	alveolar	palatal	lateral
'Khoisanist'
'old IPA'
'Zulu'		c	q		x

There are a few less well attested articulations, such as a noisy laminal denti-alveolar lateral release (<Ⅲ> [triple pipe] in an ''ad hoc'' transcription), which contrasts with an apical postalveolar lateral in Mangetti Dune ǃKung; an abrupt sub-apical retroflex release <‼> in Angolan ǃKung; and a "slapped" alveolar click in Hadza and Sandawe, where the tongue slaps the bottom of the mouth after the release. (These distinctions may suffice for the Damin releases as well.) However, the Khoisan languages are poorly attested, and it is quite possible that, as they become better described, more click releases will be found.
Typically when a click consonant is transcribed, two symbols are used, one for each articulation, connected with a tie bar. This is because a click such as has been traditionally been analysed as a nasal velar rear articulation pronounced simultaneously with the forward ingressive release . The symbols may be written in either order, depending on the analysis. However, a tie bar is not often used in practice, and when the manner is a simple [k], it will often be omitted as well. That is, = = = = .
The manner of a click is generally written before the release: or , and this is preferred by the IPA. However, many Khoisanists prefer to write the manner second: or . This is because any diacritics which follow belong to the manner rather than to the forward release, and they are more easily understood when they are made diacritics of the manner. Regardless, elements which do not overlap with the release are always written according to their temporal order: Prenasalization is always written first in = , and the second ejective is always written second in = .
While the SAMPA encoding for IPA into ASCII doesn't have symbols for transcribing clicks, the proposed X-SAMPA standard does: O, |, ||, =, and !. Some instead suggest ||, # or " for the alveolar lateral click. The Kirshenbaum system uses a different method: clicks are denoted by digraphs, with the click symbol (always "!") added to the stop homorganic to the release, but with the manner of the accompaniment. For example, /t!/ is a voiceless dental click, and /m!/ is a nasal bilabial click. (This transcription is used in the literature on Damin.) However, the International Phonetic Association recommends using the IPA symbols in Unicode, or using the number codes which they have assigned to each symbol.

Places of articulation

These are often called click ''types, releases,'' or ''influxes.'' There are seven or eight known releases, not counting slapped or egressive clicks. These are ''bilabial affricated'' , or "bilabial"; ''laminal denti-alveolar affricated'' , or "dental"; ''apical (post)alveolar plosive'' , or "alveolar"; ''laminal postalveolar (palato-alveolar) plosive'' , or "palatal"; ''subapical postalveolar (retroflex)'' (in central Ju); and two lateral clicks, which in the only dialects known to distinguish them (northern Ju) are ''laminal denti-alveolar lateral'' with a forward release (or sometimes a palatal click with a lateral release), and ''apical postalveolar lateral'' with a rear release. There may be an additional palatal-like click, symbolized , in another Ju lect which is currently being investigated. Given the poor state of documentation of Khoisan languages, it is quite possible that additional releases will turn up. No language is known to contrast more than five releases.

'Click release inventory'	'Languages'
dental only	Dahalo
alveolar only	Sesotho
3 releases, , ,	Sandawe, Hadza, Xhosa, Zulu	''(in Hadza and sometimes Sandawe, ǃ is "slapped"; Hadza also has a single word with )''
4 releases, , , ,	Korana, Nama, Yeyi, Zhuǀ'hõasi (southeastern Ju)
4 releases, , , ,	ǃKung (Grootfontein)
5 releases, , , , ,	ǂHõã, Nǀu, ǀXam, ǃXóõ
5 releases, , , , ,	ǃKung (Angola)
5 releases, , , , ,	Damin

Names found in the literature

The terms for the click releases were originally developed by Bleek in 1911. Since then there has been some conflicting variation. Here are the terms used in some of the main references.

'Click release'	'Bantu letters'	'Also known as:'
dental	''c''	dental affricative/affricated/with friction; alveolar affricated; denti-alveolar; apico-lamino-dental; denti-pharyngeal
palatal		palato-alveolar; alveolar; alveolar instantaneous; denti-alveolar implosive; palato-pharyngeal
alveolar	''q''	cerebral; (post-) alveolar implosive; palato-alveolar; palato-alveolar instantaneous; palatal; palatal retroflex; apico-palatal; central alveo-uvular
lateral	''x''	lateral affricative/with friction; alveolar lateral affricated; post-alveolar lateral; lateral apico-alveo-palatal; lateral alveo-uvular

Manners of articulation

''(Data is primarily from Ladefoged; see references at individual language articles.)''
Click manners are often called click ''accompaniments'' or ''effluxes,'' but both terms are objected to on theoretical grounds.
There is a great variety of click manners, both simplex and complex, the latter variously analysed as consonant clusters or contours. With so few click languages, and so little study of them, it is also unclear to what extent clicks in different languages are equivalent. For example, the of Nama, of Sandawe, and of Hadza may be essentially the same phoneme, as may and ; no one language distinguishes either set, and the differences in transcription may have more to do with the approach of the linguist than with actual differences in the sounds.
Some Khoisan languages are typologically unusual in allowing mixed voicing in non-click consonant clusters/contours, such as , so it is not surprising that they would allow mixed voicing in clicks as well.
There is ongoing discussion as to which clicks are best analysed as consonant clusters. For example, some linguists feel that ejective clicks are not possible, and indeed in many Khoisan languages they appear to be clusters. However, in other languages, phonetic measurements have found that, although the ejective release follows the click release, it is the rear closure of the click that is ejective, not a subsequent consonant. (In Ladefoged's analysis in the table below, if there is only a single segment, this is indicated by a single non-subscript letter for the accompaniment.) This is one reason for analysing such clicks as airstream contours instead of clusters.
Of the languages illustrated below,

★ ǃXóõ and Nǀu are Tuu languages

★ ǂHoan and Juǀʼhõasi are ǂHoan-Juu languages

★ Korana, Nama, and Gǀui are Khoe languages
(all spoken primarily in Namibia and Botswana)

★ Sandawe and Hadza are language isolates spoken in Tanzania

★ Dahalo is a Cushitic language of Kenya

★ Xhosa is a Bantu language of South Africa

★ Damin was an initiation jargon in northern Australia.
The four Dahalo manners occur only with a dental release. Damin has only nasal clicks, but in addition has a voiceless unaspirated "spurt" that might be considered an egressive click. Three Sandawe clicks (
★ ) conflate to prenasalized voiced between vowels. In other languages nasalization is variable, and may be best heard between vowels.

'IPA'

'Manner'

'ǃXóõ'

'Nǀuu'

'ǂHoan'

'Zhuǀ’hõasi'

'Korana'

'Nama'

'Gǀui'

'Sandawe'

'Hadza'

'Dahalo'

'Xhosa'

'Damin'

''Voiceless unaspirated velar plosive

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''Aspirated velar plosive

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''Voiceless unaspirated velar plosive and glottal stop

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''Voiceless glottalized velar plosive (prenasalized between vowels)

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''Voiceless velar nasal and glottal stop

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''Voiced velar plosive

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''Voiced affricated velar plosive

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''Breathy-voiced velar plosive

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''Voiced velar nasal

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''Labialized voiced velar nasal

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''Breathy-voiced velar nasal

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''Voiceless velar nasal

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''Labialized voiceless velar nasal

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''Voiceless delayed-aspirated velar nasal

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''Voiceless ingressive pulmonic nasal with delayed aspiration

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''Preglottalized velar nasal

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''Voiced velar nasal followed by voiceless aspirated velar nasal

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''Voiceless unaspirated uvular plosive

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''Aspirated uvular plosive

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''Voiceless affricated velar plosive

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''Voiceless affricated uvular plosive

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''Uvular ejective''

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''Affricated velar ejective

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''Affricated uvular ejective

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''Voiceless velar ejective, followed by uvular ejective

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''Voiced velar plosive followed by aspiration

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''Voiced velar plosive followed by voiceless velar fricative

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''Voiced velar plosive followed by voiceless affricated ejective

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''Voiced velar plosive, followed by uvular ejective

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''Voiced uvular plosive (usually prenasalized)

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''Voiced (or prenasalized) uvular plosive, followed by aspiration, velar fricative, or uvular trill

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Click genesis and click loss

It is not known how clicks arose. It is often suggested that they developed from other complex consonants, but the development of clicks from other consonants has never been observed.
Clicks are often portrayed as a primitive or primordial feature of human language, but we have no reason to suspect that they are very old compared to other speech sounds. In fact, given their complexity, they may be relatively recent.
However, several still vibrant languages demonstrate click loss. For example, the East Kalahari languages have lost a large percentage of their clicks, presumably due to Bantu influence. Generally a click is replaced by a consonant that retains the manner of articulation of the accompaniment. Alveolar click releases tend to simply drop out, leaving a velar stop or affricate such as , while palatal clicks leave behind a palatal stop such as , or a post-alveolar affricate , and dental clicks tend to leave an alveolar affricate behind. That is, the resulting consonant tends to retain the manner of the click as well as the place of the forward articulation.

References

★ Ladefoged, Peter (1968), ''A phonetic study of West African languages: An auditory-instrumental survey''. Cambridge University Press, 2nd edition. ISBN 0-521-06963-7

★ Ladefoged, Peter and Ian Maddieson (1996), ''The Sounds of the World's Languages''. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Ltd. ISBN 0-631-19815-6

★ Anthony Traill & Rainer Vossen (1997), ''Sound change in the Khoisan languages: new data on click loss and click replacement''. JALL 18, 21-56.

See also

★ List of phonetics topics

External links

★ Collection of click-language links and audio samples.

★ Nicholas Wade, "How an ancient click clique started our mother tongue", ''The Age'',19 March 2003.