Where are Khoisan languages spoken in Africa?

Created from Britannica articles using AI. AI can make mistakes, so verify using Britannica articles.

Khoisan languages are primarily spoken in southern Africa, with their distribution currently concentrated in Botswana and Namibia. Historically, these languages were spoken across a much wider range of southern Africa, extending from southern Angola in the west to Swaziland in the east and the Cape of Good Hope in the south.12

In addition to the southern African concentration, there are two outlying Khoisan languages found in eastern Africa:
* Sandawe: Spoken by approximately 70,000 people in Tanzania, northwest of Dodoma.3
* Hadza: Spoken by about 800 people in north-central Tanzania near Lake Eyasi.3

While the term "Khoisan" is used to group these languages due to shared features like the use of click consonants, they are not considered a single language family in the strict sense, as they exhibit significant linguistic differences.12