Nama Alphabet & Click Letters

Nama, known in the language itself as Khoekhoegowab ("the language of the Khoekhoe"), is written in the Latin alphabet. Most of it is familiar: a b d e g h i k m n o p r s t u w x, with c, f, q, y and z mainly in loanwords and names. What makes a Nama text look different at first sight are four extra letters that are nothing but vertical strokes and a cross: ǀ, ǁ, ǂ and ǃ. Each one stands for a click consonant.

Vowels carry two marks. A circumflex, as in â, î and û, shows that the vowel is nasal, said partly through the nose; CLDR, Unicode's locale data, also lists ô. A macron, as in ā, ē, ī, ō and ū, shows that the vowel is long, as in the greeting ǃGâi tsēs (good day). Nama is a tonal language, but the standard spelling uses no tone diacritics; b/d/g versus p/t/k can indicate lower versus higher tone melodies, so these are the only vowel diacritics you need. The macron vowels are not in CLDR's short list, but they are part of the standard school spelling, so the grid includes them.

Nama click sounds: what ǀ ǁ ǂ ǃ mean

The four click letters name the place where the tongue makes the click. ǀ is the dental click, the tongue pulled from the back of the upper teeth, close to the "tsk tsk" English speakers make in disapproval. ǁ is the lateral click, released at the side of the tongue, like the sound used to urge on a horse. ǂ is the palatal click, a sharp snap with the flat front of the tongue. ǃ is the alveolar click, a hollow pop from the ridge behind the teeth, like imitating a cork coming out of a bottle.

Each click can be pronounced in five ways, and the spelling adds an ordinary letter to say which: ǃg, ǃkh, ǃh, ǃn or the bare ǃ for the glottal version. Four places times five ways gives Nama twenty click consonants, written with nothing more than the four click letters and g, k, h and n. That is why so many Nama words begin with a stroke followed by a consonant: ǃGâi (good), ǁKaras, ǀAiǁgams, the Nama name of Windhoek.

The click letters have no capital and small forms. At the start of a sentence or a name, the letter after the click is capitalised instead, so you write ǃGâi tsēs! and ǁKaras, not a bigger stroke.

How to type the click letters ǀ ǁ ǂ ǃ and the Nama vowels

The real click letters are four characters of their own in Unicode's Latin Extended-B block: ǀ U+01C0, ǁ U+01C1, ǂ U+01C2 and ǃ U+01C3. In Microsoft Word type 01C3 and press Alt+X to get ǃ, and the same with 01C0, 01C1 or 01C2. In HTML write ǀ, ǁ, ǂ and ǃ. On a phone the simplest way is a text replacement: paste ǀ ǁ ǂ ǃ once as phrases with short triggers, or copy them from this page.

Many people type keyboard substitutes instead: the vertical line | for ǀ, two of them or ‖ for ǁ, the exclamation mark ! for ǃ, and the equals sign = or not-equal sign ≠ for ǂ. These substitutes are symbols, not letters. A word processor may break a line or select a word at them, and search will not match the proper spelling. A sentence like "!Gâi tsēs!" uses the same character for a click and for punctuation. With the real letters, ǃGâi is one word from end to end.

The vowels are easier. On Windows with the US-International keyboard, type ^ then a vowel for â, î, ô or û; for the macron letters use Word's Alt+X with 0101 (ā), 0113 (ē), 012B (ī), 014D (ō) or 016B (ū). On a Mac, Option+I then the vowel gives the circumflex, and the ABC Extended input source gives the macron with Option+A then the vowel. On iPhone and Android, hold down a vowel key and pick â or ā from the pop-up.

Where Nama is spoken: Nama, Damara and Khoekhoegowab

Unicode's CLDR estimates about 300,000 speakers of Nama, almost all of them in Namibia, where it is a national language taught in schools. It is the language of two peoples, the Nama in the south of the country and the Damara in the centre and north-west, which is why you will also see it called Damara, Nama/Damara or simply Khoekhoe. A small Nama-speaking community also lives across the Orange River in Namaqualand and the Richtersveld in South Africa.

Nama belongs to the Khoe family and is the most widely spoken click language outside the Bantu languages. Its clicks appear on maps of Namibia: the ǁKaras Region and many town and farm names come from Khoekhoegowab. In Namibia it sits alongside Afrikaans, English, German, Herero, and Ndonga and Kuanyama, the written forms of Oshiwambo, each with its own collection. In South Africa, Xhosa and Zulu also have clicks, but they write them with the ordinary letters c, q and x rather than with ǀ ǁ ǂ ǃ. The Namibia collection gathers the flag 🇳🇦 and the country's emoji.