Kwadi Language

Kwadi Language

Kwadi /ˈkwɑːdi/ was a "click language" of uncertain classification once spoken in the southwest corner of Angola. It is believed to be extinct. There were only fifty Kwadi in the 1950s, of which only 4–5 were competent speakers of the language. Three partial speakers were known in 1965, but in 1981 no speakers could be found.

Because Kwadi is poorly recorded, there is not much evidence with which to classify it. It is sometimes classified as the most known divergent member of the Khoe family, or, equivalently, linked to the Khoe languages in a "Kwadi–Khoe" family, though this conclusion is disputed. Proponents say it appears to have preserved elements of proto-Khoe that were lost in the western Khoe languages under the influence of Juu languages in Botswana.

The Kwadi people, called Kwepe by the Bantu, appear to have been a remnant population of southwestern African hunter-gatherers, otherwise only represented by the Cimba, Kwisi, and the Damara, who adopted the Khoekhoe language. Like the Kwisi they were fishermen, on the lower reaches of the Coroca River.

Kwadi was alternatively known by variants of koroka (Ba-koroka, Curoca, Koroka, Ma-koroko, Mu-coroca), Cuanhoca, or Cuepe.