The Kalahari Basin area: a 'Sprachbund' on the verge of extinction - "Inheritance and contact in a language complex: the case of Taa varieties (Tuu family)"

在图族(前身为南科伊桑)中，唯一幸存下来的讲大量语言的成员是塔阿语复合体。它是一大群以前的狩猎采集者(通常称为San)说的方言，地理上从纳米比亚中东部从诺索布河越过前阿米努伊保护区延伸到博茨瓦纳的甘齐和卡加拉加迪地区，一直延伸到Okwa-Tsetseng-Dutlwe-Werda线。相邻的方言之间通常存在相互可理解的现象，但地理上遥远的方言之间的差异可能相当于语言之间的语言距离。根据目前可用的数据，TAA复合体似乎分为两个主要单位，即West！Xoon(只在纳米比亚说)和其余的包括所有其他变体，从‘N|Ohan(在纳米比亚和博茨瓦纳边境两侧说的)到East！Xoon(博茨瓦纳最东边的TAA方言)。今天，West！Xoon和‘N|Ohan在地理和社会上不再是分开的，因为这两个语言社区一直被推向博茨瓦纳边境，现在在那里混杂在一起。

The only surviving member of the Tuu family (formerly Southern Khoisan ) with a substantial number of speakers is the Taa language complex. It is a large cluster of dialects spoken by small bands of former hunter-gatherers (commonly referred to as San ) and stretching geographically from eastcentral Namibia from the Nossob River over the former Aminuis reserve into the Ghanzi and Kgalagadi Districts of Botswana up to a line Okwa-Tsetseng-Dutlwe-Werda. Mutual intelligibility usually exists between neighboring varieties, but differences between geographically remote dialects can amount to a linguistic distance found between languages. According to the presently available data the Taa complex seems to fall into two major units, namely West !Xoon (spoken exclusively in Namibia) vs. the rest comprising all other varieties, from ’N|ohan (spoken on both sides of the Namibia-Botswana border) to East !Xoon (the easternmost Taa dialect in Botswana). Today West !Xoon and ’N|ohan are no longer separated geographically and socially because both speech communities have been pushed constantly towards the Botswana border and now intermingle there.