Sekele language


Sekele is the northern language of the ǃKung dialect continuum. It was widespread in southern Angola before the civil war, but those varieties are now spoken principally among a diaspora in northern Namibia. There are also a number of dialects spoken in Northernmost Namibia.
Sekele goes by a number of names. "Sekele" itself derives from Vasekele, the Angolan Bantu name. It is also known as Northern ǃKung. Two of the Angolan varieties have gone by the outdated term ǃʼOǃKung and Maligo. There are several Namibian dialects, of which the best known is Ekoka.

Dialects

There is a division between the northernmost dialects, formerly known as Angolan ǃKung and sometimes simply as Northern ǃKung, the more southern dialects of northernmost Namibian, known as Western ǃKung or North-Central ǃKung, and Kavango ǃKung to their east.
The Okongo, Ovambo and Mpunguvlei dialects may duplicate and or be additional forms.
A dialect of Angolan Sekele currently being investigated by linguists has been labeled Mangetti Dune ǃKung, and is spoken by a resettled diaspora community of 500–1000 in Namibia and South Africa in the settlements of Mangetti Dune and Omtaku, east of Grootfontein, Namibia, halfway to the Botswana border; and in Schmidtsdrif, west of Kimberley, South Africa.

Phonology

;Angolan ǃKung
Mangetti Dune ǃKung has clicks with four places of articulation,.
These come in the same eight series as in Grootfontein ǃKung, here represented with the palatal articulation:
;Western ǃKung

Footnotes