LIVING AND DOCUMENTED CULTURE · 03

Click languages, precise records

The different San languages

San languages belong to distinct families; clicks do not make them a single language.

Museum documentation · free public access, no account required.

Vegetation and dunes alongside the Auob riverbed, South African Kgalagadi, photographed by Bernard Dupont in 2012; territorial context of living languages. — **LIVING LANGUAGES AND TERRITORY · AUOB · CONTEXTUAL PHOTOGRAPHY OF 2012**
Documentary original · Contextual correspondence
Real and intact photograph of an Auob landscape in 2012. It provides territorial context for oral transmission; it does not represent all San languages, nor is it the homeland of ǂkasin nor a manuscript from the Bleek and Lloyd archive.
Bernard DUPONT · CC BY-SA 2.0
Source and provenance ↗Terms of use ↗

History and context

Stories, place names and tracking knowledge transmit information that a written display can barely summarise.

Evidence and interpretation

Synthesis based on UNESCO · ǂKhomani Cultural Landscape; UNESCO · Tsodilo; UNESCO · Maloti-Drakensberg. The comparison serves to formulate questions, not to fill gaps in the record with certainties.

Catalogue facts

Civilisation or trajectory: San peoples of southern Africa
Scope: Writing and Orality
Main area: Kalahari and regions of southern Africa, from Namibia and Botswana to South Africa; it was never a single state territory.

A closer look

About 1 min to read · 1 section. Further reading and sources · free access. Editorial review recorded: September 5, 2026.

A bilingual speaker in the archive

ǂkasin, one of Bleek and Lloyd’s collaborators, had a Korana father and a ǀxam mother and spoke both languages. He came from the Katkop region, northwest of Brandvlei. His contribution included comparative vocabulary, plant names and explanations about poisons and hunting practices. In 1875, Bleek highlighted the value of this bilingualism for studying language relationships. This case shows that a linguistic archive is also built from families, displacements and individual competencies: its interlocutors did not live separated in monolingual compartments.

Research · Pippa Skotnes, UCT · ǂkasinAccess recorded: September 5, 2026.

Location and territory

REGIONAL AREA

Orientative scope of San communities and landscapes in southern Africa; not an ethnic or state boundaryOrientative scope of San communities and landscapes in southern Africa; not an ethnic or state boundary. The footprint marks the orientative centre of the scope, not a boundary nor an exact point.

Sources and references

Consult the sources of this cultural synthesis

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