Clicks in Ndebele

An acoustic research on the production of Ndebele click-sounds by non-native

speakers

© Nikelwa, Thorsten and Dennis [WS 02/03 How to handle speech]

Hypothesis

Believing that it is a problem for non-native speakers of Ndebele to produce the typical click sounds, we decided to take a closer look into the range of

difficulty dependent on the position(ing) of the click, i.e. whether it occurs in the initial position or non- initial position of a word and which vowel follows it

Research

• We concentrated only on the acoustic features of click production

• Some people were asked to repeat the recordings of the original sounds

• Later we compared the recordings to the original sounds

Clicks in Ndebele

Alveolar clicks:

• 1st word “iqala” to begin • 2nd word “kuyaqhanda” it is cold• 3rd word “qalisa” to start• 4th word “qhedisa” to finish

Clicks in Ndebele

Alveolar lateral clicks:

• 5th word “ixoxo” frog• 6th word “xabana” to argue or fight• 7th word “xholani” to forgive

Some Examples

“iqala” spoken by Nils

“kuyaqhanda” spoken by Dennis

“qalisa” spoken by Morten

“qhedisa” spoken by Elke

“ixoxo” spoken by Dennis

“xabana” spoken by Stephen

“xholani” spoken by Morten

“kuyaqhanda” [native]originally recorded by niki

“kuyaqhanda” [non-native]originally recorded by stephen

“qalisa” [native]originally recorded by nikelwa

“qalisa” [non-native]originally recorded by morten

“ixoxo” [native]originally recorded by nikelwa

“ixoxo” [non-native]originally recorded by dennis

“xabana” [native]originally recorded by nikelwa

“xabana” [non-native]originally recorded by morten

Results

• Delay between click and rest of word• A variety of problems in coordinating the production

of ‘clicks’ and breathing• Rather long break due to the ‘switch’ from the click to

the vowel in ones head • Non-native speaker’s brains are not trained to

produce the click in a word context, therefore it is easier to produce clicks in the initial position

• It is only possible to learn how to produce the ‘pure’ clicks if one not only learns the language as a child, but also speaks it