Hadza

Hadza
Autoglottonym:	Haza, hazane
Pronunciation:	[ɦad͜za]
Ethnologue name:	Hadza
OLAC name:	Hadza
Location point:	3°45′ S, 35°10′ E
Genealogy
Family:	isolate
Genus:	Hadza
Speakers
Country:	Tanzania
Official in:	none
Speakers:	1,000
Writing system:	none
Codes
ISO 639-3:	hts

Hadza is a language isolate of Tanzania.

Location and Speakers

Hadza is spoken along the entire eastern shore of Lake Eyasi, at the base of the Serengeti Plateau in Tanzania, from Mount Oldeani in the north to the Isanzu agricultural areas in the south.

There is a small population of Hadza to the west of the lake, in Dunduina 'Sukumaland', but their number seems to be decreasing and many of them only speak Sukuma and Swahili.

There are approximately 1,000 speakers of Hadza, most now bilingual in Swahili. Other second languages include Isanzu in the south, Sukuma in the west, and to a lesser degree Datooga in the center (e.g. near the Yaeda Valley) and Iraqw on the margins of Iraqw territory. The northern Hadza area, around the town of Mangola, was largely monolingual until the introduction of Standard Swahili after independence.

As of 2005, language transmission was robust in the areas east of the lake. About 40% of speakers lived as full-time hunter-gatherers.

Classification

Hadza is a language isolate. Greenberg classified it as Khoisan due to its use of click consonants. If it were not for the clicks, it's likely that Hadza would have been classified as Cushitic.

Dialects

There do not appear to be any dialects of Hadza, presumably due to the mobility of its speakers. There are some regional differences of vocabulary, however, and speakers note that there are many more Bantu loans in the south.

Name

"Hadza" is the most common name in the literature. It simply means 'human being'. The derivative "Hadzane" (in the manner of the people) is sometimes encountered as the name of the language. The feminine plural "Hadzabe'e" may be used for the people, though it is commonly spelled "Hadzabe" due to devoicing of the final vowel. (The feminine is the inclusive gender in the plural.) "Hadzapi", or more accurately hadzaphi'i, is the masculine copular form. "Hatza" and "Hatsa" are older German spellings.

"Tindiga" is from the Swahili name, watindiga 'people of the marsh grass', presumably named for the large spring in Mangola. The name wahadza ~ kihadza is now often found in Swahili publications, but the Hadza do not consider watindiga to be pejorative. "Kindiga" may be a cognate from one of the local Bantu languages. "Kangeju" (pronounced Kangeyu) is an obsolete German name of unclear origin. The name "Wahi" (pronounced Vahi) in Kohl-Larsen is a Sukuma name for the Hadza.

Phonology

Hadza syllable structure is limited to CVN. There are no vowel-initial roots, unless h is analyzed as an allophone of zero. Syllable-coda N surfaces as a homorganic nasal when a following consonant has a place of articulation to assimilate to, and as nasalization of the vowel before a glottal consonant (glottal stop and h/zero) and pre-pausa. Coda N appears allophonically before voiced or glottalized nasal clicks.

Stress and tone

Salient stress and pitch is not restricted to a particular syllable. There are no known minimal pairs, grammatical or lexical, for stress or tone. Pairs claimed in the literature have turned out to either not be distinct or not be minimal pairs.

Vowels

There are five vowels, which are close to cardinal [a e i o u]. /u/ is relatively uncommon except in loans or due to vowel-height assimilation, and does not occur in grammatical morphemes unless the vowel of the following syllable is /i/. Phonetic nasal vowels, which are not common except before a consonant, are here analyzed as /VN/.

Consonants

Hadza consonants

		Labial	Denti- alveolar		(Post) alveolar		Palatal	Post- velar		Glottal
					central	lateral		plain	labialized
Click	Aspirated		ᵏǀʰ		ᵏǃʰ	ᵏǁʰ
	Tenuis		ᵏǀ		ᵏǃ	ᵏǁ
	Voiced nasal		ᵑǀ		ᵑǃ	ᵑǁ
	Glottalized nasal		ᵑǀˀ		ᵑǃˀ	ᵑǁˀ
Plosive / affricate
	Ejective	pʼ	t͜sʼ		t͜ʃʼ	cʎ̥˔ʼ		k͜xʼ	k͜xʷʼ
	Aspirated	pʰ	tʰ	t͜sʰ	t͜ʃʰ	c͜ʎ̥˔ʰ		kʰ	kʷʰ
	Tenuis	p	t	t͜s	t͜ʃ	cʎ̥˔		k	kʷ	ʔ
	Voiced	b	(d)	(d͜z)	(d͜ʒ)			(ɡ)	(ɡʷ)
Nasal		m	n			(ɲ)		(ŋ)	(ŋʷ)
Fricative		(fʷ)	ɬ	s	ʃ
Approximant			ɺ				j		w	ɦ

Consonants in parentheses are thought to be loans, though the voiced obstruents at least are well-integrated and may be spreading to native roots.

Consonants with a grey background may follow a coda nasal. (That is, they may be C2 in a CVNCV pattern.) /ᵏǃ/ and /ᵏǁ/ are not attested in that position, but it is suspected they are accidental gaps, given that only two roots are known with /ᵑǀ/ after a nasal, and these gaps have not yet been investigated in the field.

The voice-onset time of consonants is reduced after a nasal coda: tenuis consonants may be partially or completely voiced, and the aspiration of aspirated consonants may be reduced or lost. A /b/~/p/ distinction has not been found in this position.

/ɺ/ is typically realized as [l] post-pausa and [ɾ] elsewhere, though [ɺ] is not uncommon. It also tends toward [l] when it occurs as both C1 and C2, as in /ɺoɺa/ (sp. rabbit).