Sekele language
Sekele is the northern language of the ǃKung dialect continuum. It was widespread in southern Angola before the Angolan Civil War, but those varieties are now spoken principally among a diaspora in northern Namibia. There are also a number of dialects spoken in far northern Namibia.
Sekele is known by a number of names. "Sekele" itself derives from Vasekele, the Angolan Bantu name. It is also known as Northern ǃKung, Northern ǃXuun, and Northern Ju. Two of the Angolan varieties have gone by the outdated term ǃʼOǃKung and Maligo. There are several Namibian dialects, of which the best-known is Ekoka.
Dialects
There is a division between the northernmost dialects, formerly known as Angolan ǃKung or Northern ǃKung, and the more southern dialects of northernmost Namibia, which are known as Western ǃKung or North-Central ǃKung, as well as between them and the eastern dialect of Kavango ǃKung. These northern dialects include:- Angolan ǃKung, originally of Southern Angola, which is situated around the Cunene, Cubango, Cuito, and Cuando Rivers;
- Western ǃKung, of northern Namibia, between the Ovambo River and the Angolan border, around the tributaries of the Okavango River east of Rundu to the Etosha Pan;
- Kavango ǃKung
A dialect of Angolan Sekele currently being investigated by linguists has been labeled Mangetti Dune ǃKung, and is spoken by a resettled diaspora community of 500–1000 in Namibia and South Africa in the settlements of Mangetti Dune and Omtaku, east of Grootfontein, Namibia; and in Schmidtsdrif, west of Kimberley, South Africa.
Phonology
;Angolan ǃKungMangetti Dune ǃKung has clicks with four places of articulation,. A reported distinction between dental lateral and postalveolar lateral clicks has not been confirmed by further research. These clicks come in the same eight series as in Grootfontein ǃKung, represented with the palatal articulation:
;Western ǃKung