On the radio this morning they told an interesting, language-related story about David Attenborough, the famous maker of natural history programmes. Apparently he filmed people speaking one of the ‘click’ languages for a programme called The Tribal Eye, which examined sculpture, weaving, metal casting, and other artistic activities in tribal societies around the world. After working on the sound track for quite a while, the sound engineer proudly announced that he had managed to clean up all the strange clicking sounds in the background – he didn’t realise that they were an integral part of the language.
There are some sample recordings of click languages here.
Do any of you speak or have you studied a language that includes click consonants?
