Background

Language Family: Khoisan / Southern Africa / Central / Tshu-Khwe / Southwest

Also spelled Nharo and Naron, it is spoken in the Ghanzi district of Botswana.

Phonology

Consonants (Pulmonic)

/p/ is very rare in native words, so much so that Kagaya (1978) argues that it only appears in loans (Kagaya 1978, 34; Visser 1998, 119).
Alveolar affricates and fricatives are produced in free variation with their postalveolar counterparts (Kagaya 1978, 36–37).
Loanwords also include /f/ and /l/ (Visser 1998, 120).
/x/ and /h/ only contrast word-initially (Kagaya 1978, 37).
/m/ is the only consonant that can occur root-finally (Visser 1998, 123).
Kagaya (1978) diverges from Visser’s analysis (which I have followed) in several places (p. 34):
- He finds /s/ to be an allophone of /ʃ/.
- He identifies the aspirated stops (as well as /t’/) as allophones of the plain voiceless stops. (Largely based on frequency, per Kagaya (1978) (pp. 35-36), although he does find /tʰ/ and /t/ to exist in complementary distribution.)
- He does not see the velar-released stops as occurring phonemically.
- He identifies /h/ as an allophone of /x/.
- He sees syllabic nasals for /m/, /n/, and /ŋ/ as existing contrastively (Kagaya 1978, 39).
The position of /w/ and /j/ is somewhat unclear; they only occur intervocalically, so their realization may just be due to an epenthetic or reduction process rather than the production of a distinct phoneme (Kagaya 1978, 37–38). I have chosen to treat them as phonetic realizations.

	Place of Articulation
Manner of Articulation	Labial	Alveolar	Velar	Glottal
Stops (normal release)	p pʰ b	t tʰ tʼ d	k kʰ ɡ
Stops (velar fricative release)		tx	kx kxʼ
Affricates (normal release)		ts tsʰ tsʼ dz
Affricates (velar fricative release)		tsx
Fricatives		s	x	h
Nasals	m	n
Flaps		ɾ
Note: Phonemes with the diacritics (ʰ) and (ʼ) are aspirates and ejectives, respectively.

Clicks

Clicks only occur root-initially. Each click has seven types of release: voiceless, voiced, prenasalized, ejective, aspirated, released into a fricative, and released into an ejective fricative (Visser 1998, 121).
Kagaya (1978) classes the types of releases as voiceless, voiced, prenasalized, ejective, aspirated, and glottalized (p. 41); he excludes the fricative-released clicks due to not finding minimal pairs between them and the aspirated clicks (p. 44). As for the ejective-fricative clicks, Kagaya argues that they could be allophones of either the ejective or the aspirated clicks. (p. 46)

	Place of Articulation
Manner of Release	Dental	Alveolar	Palatal	Lateral
Voiceless	ǀ	ǃ	ǂ	ǁ
Voiced	ᶢǀ	ᶢǃ	ᶢǂ	ᶢǁ
Prenasalized	ⁿǀ	ⁿǃ	ⁿǂ	ⁿǁ
Ejective	ǀʼ	ǃʼ	ǂʼ	ǁʼ
Aspirated	ǀʰ	ǃʰ	ǂʰ	ǁʰ
Fricative	ǀx	ǃx	ǂx	ǁx
Eject. Fric.	ǀxʼ	ǃxʼ	ǂxʼ	ǁxʼ

Vowels

Vowel length is contrastive (Kagaya 1978, 31); however, to better reflect the various suprasegmental features of Naro vowels, I will be following the patterns of the authors I have referenced by representing long vowels as sequences of consecutive vowels rather than by using the (ː) symbol.
Vowel nasalization is also contrastive. Although my sources have argued that any vowel can be nasalized, nasalized high vowels are not attested in the Crúbadán corpus, so I have excluded them from my ruleset. Nasal vowels are marked with a tilde (◌̃).
Only the first vowel in a Naro word can be pharyngealized (Visser 1998, 124).

	Front	Central	Back
High	i		u
Mid	e		o oˤ
Low		a aˤ
Note: Phonemes on the left of each cell are plain, whereas phonemes on the right of each cell are pharyngealized

Tone

Tone is carried on vowels, as well as on syllabic /m/. Naro has three tones: high, mid, and low. Orthographically, high tones are marked with an acute accent (´), while low tones are marked with a grave accent (`). Mid tones are unmarked (Visser 1998, 132).
- Nasal and pharyngealized vowels do not appear to coexist with tones.
Voiced consonants tend to lower the tone of following vowels, while ejectives tend to raise it (Visser 1998, 133).

Alphabet

⟨w⟩ and ⟨y⟩ are used orthographically to represent [w] and [j], sounds which I have decided to treat not as phonemes. I have opted to treat them as epenthetic vowels occurring intervocalically (Kagaya 1978, 37–38), thus, the graphemes will transcribe to nothing in the rule set.
Note: /pʰ/ is not represented in the Crúbadán corpus.

Grapheme	Phoneme	Comment
a	/a/
a̱	/aˤ/
b	/b/
c	/ǀ/
c’	/ǀʼ/
d	/d/
e	/e/
f	/f/
g	/x/
h	/h/
i	/i/
k	/k/
m	/m/
n	/n/
o	/o/
o̱	/oˤ/
p	/p/
q	/ǃ/
q’	/ǃʼ/
r	/ɾ/
s	/s/
t	/t/
u	/u/
w		no phonemic representations: [w] intervocalically
x	/ǁ/
x’	/ǁʼ/
y		no phonemic representation: [j] intervocalically
z	/dz/
Multigraph
cg	/ǀx/
cg’	/ǀxʼ/
ch	/ǀʰ/
dc	/ᶢǀ/
nc	/ⁿǀ/
gh	/ɡ/
kg	/kx/
kg’	/kxʼ/
kh	/kʰ/
ph	/pʰ/
qg	/ǃx/
qg’	/ǃxʼ/
qh	/ǃʰ/
dq	/ᶢǃ/
nq	/ⁿǃ/
tg	/tx/
th	/tʰ/
tc	/ǂ/
tcg	/ǂx/
tcg’	/ǂxʼ/
tch	/ǂʰ/
tc’	/ǂʼ/
dtc	/ᶢǂ/
ntc	/ⁿǂ/
ts	/ts/
tsh	/tsʰ/
xg	/ǁx/
xg’	/ǁxʼ/
xh	/ǁʰ/
dx	/ᶢǁ/
nx	/ⁿǁ/

Lenition Rules

Some speakers spirantize /dz/ to [z] (Visser 1998, 120).
/d/ becomes [ɾ] root-medially (Visser 1998, 122).
- Kagaya (1978) observes the same process, but argues that it’s a phonemic /ɾ/ that only occurs intervocalically (p. 37).
Intervocalic /b/ spirantizes to [β] (Kagaya 1978, 34).

Misc. Rules

Some interrogative words feature word-initial syllabic /n/ (Visser 1998, 123).
The contrasts between /i e/ and /u o/ collapse when the vowels are nasalized (Visser 1998, 124).
In words that begin with a labial or alveolar consonant and have a front vowel in the second syllable, /a/ in the first syllable tends to raise (Visser 1998, 128).
- This consequently collapses the vowel sequences /ai/ and /ae/ to [ii] and [ee] respectively (ibid.).

References

Kagaya, Ryohei. 1978. “A Phonetic Sketch of Naron Around Ghanzi.” Journal of Asian and African Studies, 29–63.

Visser, Hessel. 1998. “The Phonological System of Naro.” In Language, Identity, and Conceptualization Among the Khoisan, edited by Mathias Schladt, 117–36. Rüdiger Köppe.

Naro

Bill Mizgerd