Click loud letter
.jpg)
A click sound letter is a letter of the Latin writing system that is used in orthographies exclusively for the writing of click sounds ( clicks made with the tongue) (independently or as part of a digraph / trigraph). As such, the characters ǀ , ǁ , ǂ and ǃ are used for languages of southern Africa . These click letters are used, for example, in the orthography of Khoekhoegowab and Juǀ'hoan (language of the Juǀ'hoansi ). They are also part of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) in the same form .
Languages with orthographies that use click letters typically use more than four click sounds. The sound-letter assignment is then established by using other letters for the individual sounds (i.e. those that can also be used for other sounds than click sounds, although not necessarily in the same orthography) or letter combinations (digraphs, trigraphs) be used. The latter are mostly combinations of a click letter and one or two letters of the basic Latin alphabet , an apostrophe can also be part of it.
Occurrence
Since Khoekhoegowab is one of the national languages of Namibia , click loud letters can be found in personal names and geographical names, for example in the name of the constituency ǃNamiǂNûs .
In an effort not only to fall back on European (especially Greco-Latin) mythology for names of celestial bodies , the International Astronomical Union (IAU ) published this name from the mythology of the Juǀ'hoansi in 2019 for the dwarf planet candidate (229762) Gǃkúnǁ'hòmdímà Original spelling with click letters.
Typography and appearance
.png)
The basic shape of letters |, ǁ and ǂ is a vertical line, usually in uppercase height ( cap height ) and thus shorter than the character " vertical bar " ( "|"), which is usually the typeface height has (including the descender fills in). This basic shape is usually much thinner than the vertical lines of the capital letters (i.e. more of a hairline than a shadowline ) and in any case without serifs . The letter ǁ is a doubling of the basic shape with a narrow space between these lines, often equal to the line width. The letter ǂ is crossed in the middle by two parallel horizontal lines of the same width and the same thickness as the basic shape. In italic fonts , these letters are occasionally, but not regularly, inclined to match the basic Latin letters . The characters in bold letters are occasionally left bold.
The letter ǃ almost always resembles the exclamation mark , although it was originally designed as a vertical line with the same basic shape as ǀ, ǁ and ǂ, only with a dot below it. It is then also beveled and bolded in italic and bold variants of a font such as the exclamation mark, even if this does not conform to the letters ǀ, ǁ and ǂ.
history
The click letters were designed around 1850 by the missionary and linguist Johann Georg Krönlein and distributed by the linguist Karl Richard Lepsius . In its original form, its basic form was uniformly a simple vertical line at the height of lower case letters ( x-height ), which is inclined at an angle in the same way as the other letters when used in the italic script customary for phonetic spelling. The letters were then obtained by doubling the basic form or by adding a point below or a short slash (similar to an acute accent) above. The vertical line with two horizontal lines was proposed at a conference of the Rheinische Missionsgesellschaft in 1856 and quickly replaced Lepsius' vertical line with acute.
In 1989 the letters were added to the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA); The letters ǀ, ǃ, ǁ replace the letters ʇ , ʗ , ʖ that were previously used there .
Representation on computer systems
The click letters are all in Unicode and can therefore be easily displayed on current computer systems:
| character |
Unicode code point links to the Unicode block |
Name / description |
Decimal code |
HTML entity |
Latex |
Keyboard entry with assignment E1 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ǀ | U + 01C0 latin letter dental click | Dental click letter | 0448 | Alt Gr+ k-' | ||
| ǁ | U + 01C1 latin letter lateral click | Letter for alveolar click | 0449 | Alt Gr+ k-" | ||
| ǂ | U + 01C2 latin letter alveloar click | Letter for lateral alveolar click | 0450 | Alt Gr+ k-# | ||
| ǃ | U + 01C3 latin letter retroflex click | Letter for retroflex click | 0451 | Alt Gr+ k-! |
Keyboard input
On the extended German standard keyboard layout E1 according to DIN 2137-01: 2018-12, the click letters can be entered with the " sub- comma - and special language key" (key combination Alt Gr+ k, "K as click loud"). This is followed by:
- 'or "for ǀ or ǁ ("single line or double line for single line click or double line click"),
- ! for ǃ ("exclamation mark for similar click letters"),
- # for ǂ (“Characters made up of many dashes for click letters made up of many dashes”).
Substitute representations
State motto in the Coat of arms of South Africa : letters "ke e: / xarra // ke" instead of "e !ke: |xarra ǁke" ( |Xam language "brings together different peoples" for).
Detail scan from the announcement of the coat of arms of South Africa with the state motto spelling (2000)
Detail scan from a document of the Government of Namibia (2018), spelling "// Karas" instead of " ǁKaras "
Since the click letters were not available on commercially available typewriters , substitute representations for characters available there have become commonplace. The characters ǀ and ǁ are represented by / or // (single or double slash ) as a substitute. The symbol ǂ is often written as = ( equal sign ), occasionally also as # ( diamond ) or in print also as ≠ (mathematical inequality sign ) . In any case, the character ǃ is indistinguishable from the exclamation mark in common typefaces . These substitute representations have also survived into the computer age, since the substitute characters (except for ≠) are contained in the ASCII character set. The substitute representation in the state motto text in the South African coat of arms designed in 2000 is particularly striking .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Khoekhoegowab: 3ǁî xoaǀgaub = orthography 3 . Namibia Publishing House, Windhoek 2002, ISBN 978-99916-0-408-4 .
- ↑ Megan Biesele (Ed.): Juǀ'hoan Folktales: Transcription and English Translations. A Literacy Primer by and for Youth and Adults of the Juǀ'hoan Community. Victoria, BC, Canada 2009, ISBN 978-1-4269-9809-6 .
- ↑ (229762) Gǃkúnǁ'hòmdímà in the Small-Body Database of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (English). Retrieved April 4, 2020.
- ↑ a b c C. R. Lepsius: The general linguistic alphabet: Principles of the transfer of foreign writing systems and previously unwritten languages into European letters . Verlag von Wilhelm Hertz, Berlin 1855, pp. 45–47, scan in Google book search.
- ^ Douglas Martyn Beach: The phonetics of the Hottentot language . W. Heffer & Sons Ltd., London 1938, p. 288 ff.
- ^ A b Johanna Christina Brugman: Segments, Tones and Distribution in Khoekhoe Prosody. (PDF) August 2009, pp. 20–21 , archived from the original on March 6, 2019 ; Retrieved August 25, 2013 (English, dissertation, Cornell University).
- ^ Oswin Köhler et al .: The symbols for clicks . In: Journal of the International Phonetic Association (1988) 18: 2, pages 140-142, doi: 10.1017 / S0025100300003741 .
- ^ Government Gazette - Staatskoerant vol. 218 No. 21131. Government of South Africa , April 28, 2000, archived from the original on November 3, 2013 ; accessed on March 21, 2020 .
- ↑ 2011 Population and Housing Census. Namibia Statistics Agency, 2011, archived from the original on February 24, 2015 ; accessed on March 21, 2020 .
- ^ Government Gazette of the Republic of Namibia No. 6646 July 13, 2018, accessed March 21, 2020 .