Yeyi (autoethnonymShiyɛyi) is aBantu language spoken by many of the approximately 50,000Yeyi people along theOkavango River inNamibia andBotswana. Yeyi, influenced byJuu languages, is one of several Bantu languages along the Okavango with clicks. Indeed, it has the largest known inventory ofclicks of any Bantu language, with dental, alveolar, palatal, and lateral articulations. Though most of its older speakers prefer Yeyi in normal conversation, it is being gradually phased out in Botswana by a popular move towards Tswana, with Yeyi only being learned by children in a few villages. Yeyi speakers in theCaprivi Strip of north-eastern Namibia, however, retain Yeyi in villages (including Linyanti), but may also speak the regional lingua franca,Lozi.

The main dialect is called Shirwanga. A slight majority of Botswana Yeyi are monolingual in the national language,Tswana, and the majority of the rest are bilingual.

Yeyi appears to be a divergent lineage of Bantu.^[3] It is usually classified as a member of the R Zone Bantu languages. The language has been phonetically influenced by theJu languages, though it is no longer in contact with them.

Vowel length is also distinctive.

• Vowel sounds/ɛɔ/ are phonetically noted[ɛ̝ɔ̝].
• /ɔ/ can also be heard as[ʊ] in word-final position./i/ can also be heard as[ə] in prefixes.
• Sounds/iua/ can be heard as nasalized[ĩũã] when preceding nasal consonants. A nasal[ɛ̝̃] can also be heard, but only in stem-internal position.
• Sounds/iu/ can tend to be centralized as[ɨʉ] following fricative and sibilant sounds.

Other palatalized consonant sounds that can occur are/bʲⁿdʲlʲ/.

• A glottal stop sound[ʔ] can also occur, but only between vowels.
• Palatalized-velar stop consonants/kʲkʰʲkʲʼɡʲ/ may often be heard as palatal stop consonants[ccʰcʼɟ].
• A labial approximant sound/β̞/ can range from an approximant sound to a fricative sound[β̞~β].
• An alveolar rhotic consonant/r/ can be heard as a tap or a trill, but can also be heard as a retroflex tap[ɽ].
• An alveolar lateral consonant/l/ can also be heard as a retroflex lateral[ɭ].^[4]

• Prenasal palatalized-velar stop consonants/ᵑkʲᵑɡʲ/ may often be heard as prenasal palatal stop consonants[ᶮcᶮɟ].

Lateral sounds only rarely occur.

Yeyi may have up to four click types,dentalǀ,alveolarǃ,palatalǂ, andlateralǁ. However, the actual number of clicks is disputed, as researchers disagree on how many series of manner and phonation the language contrasts.

Sommer & Voßen (1992) listed the following manners, shown as the palatal series:

The uvular ejective series was uncertain due to infrequency.

Fulopet al. (2002) studied the clicks of a limited vocabulary sample with 13 Yeyi speakers who were not from the core speaking area. The series they found are:

There are in additionprenasalized clicks such as/ŋᶢǂ/ and/ᵑǂˀ/, but Fulopet al. analyze these asconsonant clusters, not single sounds. In addition, a reported uvular affricated click appears to actually be velar, with the affrication a variant of aspiration, and so has been included underᵏǂʰ. There is similar velar affrication with the dental ejective click among some speakers. The ejective clicks are apparently uvular.^[6]

Miller (2011), in a comparative study with other languages, interprets their results as follows,^[7]

The contrast between ejective and glottalized nasal clicks is unusual, but also occurs inGǀwi.

Unfortunately, the speakers interviewed were not from the core Yeyi-speaking area, and they often disagreed on which clicks to use. Although the six dental clicks (ǀetc.) were nearly universal, only one of the lateral clicks was (the voiced clickᶢǁ). The alveolar clicks (ǃetc.) were universal apart from the ejective, which was only attested from one speaker, but two of the palatal clicks were only used by half the speakers, at least in the sample vocabulary. The missing palatal and lateral clicks were substituted with alveolar or sometimes dental clicks (palatals only), and the missing ejective alveolar was substituted with a glottalized alveolar. Both of these patterns are consistent with studies ofclick loss, though it is possible that these speakers maintain these clicks in other words. 23 of the 24 possible permutations were attested in the sample vocabulary by at least one speaker, the exception being the ejective lateral click*ǁʼ. This research needs to be repeated in an area where the language is still vibrant.

Seidel (2008) says that Yeyi has three click types, dentalǀ, alveolarǃ, and, in two words only, lateralǁ. There are three basic series, tenuis, aspirated, and voiced, any of which may be prenasalized:

AYeyi Talking Dictionary was produced byLiving Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages.

• Donnelly, Simon S (1990).Phonology and morphology of the noun in Yeeyi (BA Honours dissertation). University of Cape Town.
• Fulop, Sean; Ladefoged, Peter; Liu, Fang; Vossen, Rainer (2002).Yeyi clicks: Acoustic description and analysis.
• Fulop; Ladefoged; Voßen (2007)."The dying clicks of Yeyi".CiteSeerX 10.1.1.33.757.
• Seidel, Frank (2008).A Grammar of Yeyi: A Bantu Language of Southern Africa. R. Köppe.
• Sommer, Gabriele (1995).Sozialer Wandel und Sprachverhalten bei den Yeyi (Botswana), Ethnographie des Sprachwechsels. Cologne.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)

• Yeyi Clicks: Acoustic Description and Analysis (2003)

• Yeyi
• Bantu languages
• Click languages
• Languages of Botswana
• Languages of Namibia
• Endangered languages of Africa
• Endangered Niger–Congo languages

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