From Razib, a fact I knew the edges of, but hadn't realised was this extreme.
If you were to divide the human population into two groups in terms of genetic distance, the two groups would be the Khoisan and...everyone else. These are the click-language people, identified decades ago as bushmen or Hottentots. They are from deep ancestral y-Haplogroup L0, and everyone else is from Haplogroups L1-6. They split off about 150,000 y/a. Or your could say we split off from them.
The multiple clicks in those languages are so unlikely to be added by a language from contact languages (you pretty much have to grow up with them or they are not accessible, and no one elsewhere seems to have added anything like them) that it is considered likely that they were part of the earliest language(s) in Africa and all the other languages in the world dropped them.
If you were to divide us into three groups, four groups, five groups, six groups, we would still not get out of Africa. That continent really is that diverse, which is part of why we believe humans and human languages started there.
I note in the Wikipedia article that Joseph Greenberg turned out to be right again. But historical linguists are a sticky bunch, and many like to have controversial things proven with all corners nailed down before they will sign off. I believe the most common attitude now to his theories about the tripartite division of the North American native languages and the detection of a proto-World language ancestral to all the others is that he might be right, but the signal is so faint at that time-distance that they have to regard them as still speculative.
james had a comment that somehow did not post. He thinks it might be because it has two links.
ReplyDelete"The sole report outside Africa of a language using clicks involves the special case of Damin, a ritual vocabulary of the Lardil of northern Queensland, Australia."
https://www.britannica.com/topic/click-languages
This was odd https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-click-speech-is-rare/
I recall hearing about Damin, which I believe is used only by a woman to her mother in law.
ReplyDeleteAdjoining African peoples do pick up clicks, but apparently they don't sound quite native to the native speakers. I had forgotten that it happened at all, though, so thanks.