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, 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 ʘotsi (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.