Sisters fight to save ancient African language from extinction

A 95-year-old woman is helping a last ditch effort to preserve an ancient African language before it goes extinct.

Hanna Koper and her two sisters are thought to be the last remaining speakers of the San language N|uu, rated as critically endangered by Unesco . The San, also known as “bushmen”, were the first hunter-gatherers in southern Africa.

N|uu, which has 112 distinct sounds, was passed on orally down the generations but never written down. Now Koper and her siblings have worked with linguists to design alphabet charts with consonants, vowels and 45 different “clicks” that are typical of San languages, as well as rules of spelling and grammar.

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Ancient Man and His First Civilizations

The Iberian Peninsula because of its close proximity to Africa, has been inhabited for at least 1,000,000 years. At about 45,000 B.C. the Khoisan type African “Grimaldi,” became the first “Modern Man” to enter Europe; as he crossed the Gibraltar straits and started his journey across Europe. (Europe and Africa are NOW separated by 7.7 nautical miles - during glacial periods it was much less).

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