Bushman

Bushman is spoken principally in the Kalahari Desert of southern Africa. Its speakers, the Bushmen, number about 100,000—divided between three countries: Botswana (50,000), Namibia (40,000), and South Africa (10,000). Like Hottentot, also spoken in South West Africa, Bushman is a member of the Khoisan family of languages.

The most notable feature of Bushman, and in fact of all the Khoisan languages, is the use of the so-called "click" consonants, produced by drawing air into the mouth and clicking the tongue. Since conventional spellings are obviously inadequate to represent these sounds, an assortment of lines, dots, and other marks are used.