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)"

图乌族（原南科伊桑）中唯一幸存的有大量使用者的成员是塔阿语。它是由一小群前狩猎采集者（通常被称为桑语）所说的一大群方言，从纳米比亚中东部延伸，从诺索河越过前阿米努伊保护区，进入博茨瓦纳的甘齐和卡拉加迪地区，直到一条线Okwa-Tsetseng-Dutlwe-Werda。相邻的方言之间通常可以相互理解，但地理位置遥远的方言之间的差异可能会导致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（仅在纳米比亚使用）与其他所有品种的其他语言，从' N|ohan（在纳米比亚和博茨瓦纳边境两侧使用）到East ！Xoon（博茨瓦纳最东部的Taa方言）。今天，韦斯特！Xoon和N|ohan在地理上和社会上都不再是分开的，因为这两个语言社区一直被推向博茨瓦纳边境，现在在那里混合在一起。

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.