Khoekhoe phonology

Vowels
There are 5 vowel qualities, found as oral and nasal. is strongly rounded, only slightly so. is the only vowel with notable allophony; it is pronounced before  or.

Tone
Nama has been described as having three or four tones,  or, which may occur on each mora (vowels and final nasal consonants). The high tone is higher when it occurs on one of the high vowels or on a nasal  than on mid or low vowels.

The tones combine into a limited number of 'tone melodies' (word tones), which have sandhi forms in certain syntactic environments. The most important melodies, in their citation and main sandhi forms, are as follows:

Stress
Within a phrase, lexical words receive greater stress than grammatical words. Within a word, the first syllable receives the most stress. Subsequent syllables receive less and less stress and are spoken more and more quickly.

Consonants
Nama has 31 consonants: 20 clicks and a simple set of 11 non-clicks.

Non-clicks
Between vowels, is pronounced  and  is pronounced. The affricate series is strongly aspirated, and may be analysed phonemically as aspirated stops; in the related Korana they are.

Beach (1938) reported that the Khoehkoe of the time had a velar lateral ejective affricate,, a common realisation or allophone of in languages with clicks. This sound no longer occurs in Khoekhoe but remains in its cousin Korana.

Clicks
The clicks are doubly articulated consonants. Each click consists of one of four primary articulations or "influxes" and one of five secondary articulation or "effluxes". The combination results in 20 phonemes.

The aspiration on the aspirated clicks is often light but is 'raspier' than the aspirated nasal clicks, with a sound approaching the ch of Scottish loch. The glottalised clicks are clearly voiceless due to the hold before the release, and they are transcribed as simple voiceless clicks in the traditional orthography. The nasal component is not audible in initial position; the voiceless nasal component of the aspirated clicks is also difficult to hear when not between vowels, so to foreign ears, it may sound like a longer but less raspy version of the contour clicks.

Tindall notes that European learners almost invariably pronounce the lateral clicks by placing the tongue against the side teeth and that this articulation is "harsh and foreign to the native ear". The Namaqua instead cover the whole of the palate with the tongue and produce the sound "as far back in the palate as possible".

Phonotactics
Lexical root words consist of two or rarely three moras, in the form CVCV(C), CVV(C), or CVN(C). (The initial consonant is required.) The middle consonant may only be w r m n (w is b~p and r is d~t), while the final consonant (C) may only be p, s, ts. Each mora carries tone, but the second may only be high or medium, for six tone "melodies": HH, MH, LH, HM, MM, LM.

Oral vowel sequences in CVV are. Due to the reduced number of nasal vowels, nasal sequences are. Sequences ending in a high vowel are pronounced more quickly than others, more like diphthongs and long vowels than like vowel sequences in hiatus. The tones are realised as contours. CVCV words tend to have the same vowel sequences, though there are many exceptions. The two tones are also more distinct.

Vowel-nasal sequences are restricted to non-front vowels:. Their tones are also realised as contours.

Grammatical particles have the form CV or CN, with any vowel or tone, where C may be any consonant but a click, and the latter cannot be NN. Suffixes and a third mora of a root, may have the form CV, CN, V, N, with any vowel or tone; there are also three C-only suffixes, -p 1m.sg, -ts 2m.sg, -s 2/3f.sg.