Qolape

Welcome to the  Qolape  language page.

This language is the only member of the Yárima Bantu conlang family that has clicks.Therefore it is the only member of the Southern branch of the Yárima Bantu family. It is also not intelligible with most other languages in this family like Fangwa and Entesi; it shares some vocabulary with Entegwa and a tiny fraction with Fangwezi. Qolape itself also has a lot af dialects that is thought to be expansions to the north, east and west. The language has a SVO word structure and is head initial. But the most special feature of Qolape is it's click sounds, Qolape formally distiguishes 4 clicks: the bilabial ʘ ( spelled m!), the lateral ǁ (spelled 'x'), the postalveolar !(spelled 'q') and the dental ǀ (spelled 'c'). Informally it also uses slapped alveolar click !¡ for a taboo word: !¡anda (testes) in formal speach it is pronounced 'tlanda'.

History
Although the Qolape has a lot of Bantu vocabulary, it is believed to not have been a Bantu language in the beginning. The numerals are not very recognizable as Bantu. The pronouns are also not like the other languages spoken in the region on the other hand there is a lot of vocabulary of Bantu origin and there seems to be regular correspondences between the words with clicks in Qolape and cognates in other Yárima Bantu languages like m!otsi (water) - Oseroa 'metsi' or qatsi (woman) - Entesi 'kadzi'. One of the theories is that the initial language may not have been a Bantu language but in time it may have absorbed a lot of Bantu influences through contact and marriages between members of the Bantu tribes and the members of the tribes of the ancestors of the Qolape who probably spoke a click language. A popular Qolape legend says that the language came about through an initiation ritual of young men into adulthood, they learnt to fight, to hunt and about sexual relationships. For this they learnt a secret language with clicks, the clicks sounds started as a language game between children. The women heard the men's secret speech and liked the sound of the clicks and began substituting some sounds by clicks. Some men also taught their wives their 'secret initiation language' and that helped to consolidate the language and the identity of the Qolape people in general. Although the click sounds in their language gave the Qolape a sense of pride and identity there are some dialects that don't have clicks like the Northern dialect that use 3 ejectives instead: p', t', k' for the ʘ, c, q respectively and the ɬ for lateral click. The Eastern dialects used the palatal click ǂ instead of the bilabial ʘ and some of the Western dialects use the retroflex ʈ instead of the dental click while others use the voiceless dental fricative θ. But these dialects usually do not differ too much so they are reasonably intelligible to one another.



Numerals
The basic numbers in Qolape are: 1) daya, 2) bari, 3) sade, 4) ina 5) iseni, 6) isita, 7) samfito, 8) nanato, 9) tese, 10) gumi, 100) gano, 1000) ngudo, 1000.000) bugo

The first remarkable thing is that none of the basic numerals contains a click sound, the second thing is that the numerals don't bear an obvious ressemblance to the other related languages in the region. The second difference is the way Qolape forms the mutiples of 10, 100 and 1000: gumi bari'' = 20 ( lit: 10 2x). The way to say 12 is gumi nda bari  ( lit 10+2). The multiples of 1000.000 are the only exception that allows 2 constructions: bari bugo and bugo bari 2000.000, there is a slight tendency to use the second option because it is more in line of how the other multiples of powers of ten are formed but it is not frowned upon if you use the first option in a formal setting and it is not really a construction that is used in only one region or a few regions.

Pronouns
The personal pronouns are:

Qe = I; Ca = you; ʘo = he/she (human); tu = we; ngo = you; (plur) ba = they. Qolape doesn't distinguish between the first person plural inclusive and exclusive and it is in this respect more like Fangwa and Entegwa. The Eastern dialect has an extra pronoun xe for the first person inclusive making tu the first person exclusive.

Noun classes
Like all the other mebers of it's family Qolape also has noun classes.

The m!o- bza class refers to humans  m!o nto -  bza nto = person - persons

The tse - ve class refers to objects, e.g.  tse topo -  ve topo = book - books

The e-ze class refers to animals, e.g.  e mzha - ze mzha = dog - dogs

The m!u-m!i class refers to plants, e.g.   m!u ci- m!i ci = tree - trees

The abstract marker is bu -  (du), eg  bu nto = humanity

The final class is the fluids and its is the least recognizable :

it includes words like m!otsi (water) ; m!otsiwa (milk) ; m!orowa (rain)

Verbs
The infinitive form of the verb are marked by the prefix  'ku ', so kuhlamba= to walk, kum!ona = to see, kum!ova = to talk kuqenda = to go, kushoma = to read, kufanza = lo like, kukunda = to love, kuniwa = to drink

 

 

 

 

The verbs have 3 tenses that are also marked by prefixes: sa (present), shi (past), tla (future).