Which Khoisan languages are spoken in eastern Africa?

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The Khoisan languages are primarily spoken in southern Africa, but there are two outlying languages found in eastern Africa:

  • Sandawe: Spoken by approximately 70,000 people in Tanzania, specifically in the region northwest of Dodoma.1
  • Hadza: Spoken by about 800 people in north-central Tanzania, near Lake Eyasi.1

While these languages are often grouped under the term "Khoisan" due to their distinctive use of click consonants, scholars note that the term is best used in a loose typological sense rather than as a strict linguistic family, as there is no definitive evidence that they share a common ancestral language.213