Click Consonants

Consonants produced with an ingressive velaric airstream, used as ordinary speech sounds mainly in southern African languages.

Core Principles & Analysis

• The IPA provides five click symbols: ʘ, ǀ, ǃ, ǂ, and ǁ.
• Zulu and Xhosa acquired their clicks through contact with Khoisan languages.
• English speakers use clicks non-linguistically, as in the disapproving 'tsk-tsk'.