HOTTENTOTS, a nomadic pastoral people inhabiting the western half of South Africa. They are closely allied to the Bushmen (q.v.) in racial characteristics and in language, but seem to have been affected in culture and in certain features of language by Hamitic admixture. They comprise a number of tribes, each occupying its own territory under its own chief. They all keep cattle and sheep, and also practise hunting. Socially they are organized into exogamous patrilineal clans, and they practise cross-cousin marriage. Their religion consists mainly in the worship of mythical heroes, derived partly from animistic beliefs and partly from the personification of the natural forces producing rain.
See L. Schultze, Aus Namaland and Kalahari, 1907. (I. S.) Hottentot is the name given by Europeans to the languages known to their speakers as Nama, !Kora, etc., to the number of 14 or 15 subdivisions of the main Hottentot speech. Of these, the Nama is the most important and will be taken as illustrating all the others.
The Hottentot tongue has the five vowels a e i o and u. They are long and short; when a small circle appears below a vowel (o) the letter is almost elided in pronunciation. The consonants are as in English without c,q,v,x, a true d, 1, f, y, and a true r; there are compound letters gh and k/i and the sound represented usually by r is one intermediate between 1, d and r. Vowels are nasalized by the mark — written above them.
The outstanding characteristics of the Hottentot languages are (a) the presence of clicks (q.v.), (b) the monosyllabic nature of the vocabulary and (c) the presence of tones (q.v.). The clicks are represented in most works hitherto published by the following signs : / (dental, old c) ; (palatal, old v) ; ! (cerebral, old q) ; // (lateral, old x). These clicks are initial and begin 75% of the Hottentot words.
The languages are remarkably regular and the nouns show considerable latitude in their origin. Word-building is simple and regular; gender is marked by the terminal letter, e.g., masc. -b, (Khoib, a man) ; fem. -s (Khois, a woman) ; com. -i (Khoii, a person), etc. Nouns have singular, dual and plural forms and undergo declensions for objective and vocative cases only. Adjec tives are not inflected and can be formed from nouns.
Numeration is decimal and the first ten numbers are; (I) /gui, (2) /gam, (3) !Ilona, (4) Naga, (5) goro, (6) !nani, (7) hu, (8) //khaise, (9) goisi, (1o) disi. The form disi for ten is inter esting to the Indo-Aryan philologist.
The languages are rich in pronouns and have suffixed forms in singular, dual and plural, in masc., f me. and common genders. The verb is simple, the root is the infinitive; /nam, to love; mu, to see ; !ku, to go. The relative form is made by the addition of -ba to the root //nau to hear, //nduba, to hear for somebody, etc. The reflexive adds -sin, //nem-sin, to hear oneself ; the causative adds -kei, //neiu-kei, to cause to hear; the reciprocal adds -ku, // ndu-ku, to hear one another; the diminutive adds -ro,//ndu-ro, to hear a little ; the negative is formed by adding -tama, -damn, //ndu-tama, not to hear; the potential adds -//kha, //ndu-//kha, to be able to hear, and the optative adds, kau, kau, to wish to hear.
The verb has present, past, perfect, pluperfect, future and future perfect tenses. There are no irregular verbs and no excep tions to grammatical rules.
Adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions and interjections are nu merous and are not declined. Adverbs of manner are especially numerous and are largely derived from adjectives. See C. Mein hof, Lehrbuch der Nama-Sprache (1909). See 1 USHMAN LAN GUAGES. (A. N. J. W.)