Clicks occur altogether the Khoisan languages of southern Africa, and around many of the neighboring Bantu languages, such as Nguni (Zulu, Xhosa, Swazi, Ndebele), Yeyi, and Sesotho, which borrowed them from either Khoisan languages. Clicks as well occur inside Sandawe and Hadza, two languages of Tanzania traditionally classified when Khoisan, besides as within Dahalo, an endangered South Cushitic language of Kenya.

A simply non-African language known to uses clicks when regular sound is Damin, a secret ritual code utilized by speakers of Lardil in Australia. One of a clicks around Damin is actually an egressive push button, formed when above, however using a tongue to compress the air in the mouth for an outbound (egressive) "spurt". English & numbers of more languages can utilise clicks within interjections, like "tsk-tsk" or even "gee-up".

Every bit noted above, clicks necessarily require 2 closures: an prior 1 which is represented per favorite push button symbol in the IPthe, & a tail a single which is commonly velar but can also exist as uvular. This tail articulation can be unwritten or even nasal, voiced or even voiceless, etc. (It's quite real life to pronounce a nasal apply force another time your family realise that when maintaining the double unwritten closure that you're loose to breathe through the nose.) Since a tail articulation is virtually all unremarkably velar (& may sole become velar within virtually all languages), merely a place of a prior articulation (known as the "release") is commsimply mentioned, when only a manner of a tail articulation (known as the "accompaniment") is specified. So the "nasal dental click" means the thrust by owning the dental prior articulation/release & the velar rhinal tail articulation/accompaniment.

There are many combinations of elements making higher the double click accompaniment, occasionally of the two quite intimidating. These include voiceless, soft, aspirate, breathy soft, rhinal, voiceless rhinal, breathy voiced nasal, glottalized, voiceless nasal glottalized, affricative consonant, ejective affricate, prevoiced, prenasalized, & others too, including highly complicated combinations like the voiced velar push followed by voiceless affricated ejective, (Ladefoged & Maddieson, 1996). This means that pentagraphs rather gk!x’ come conceivable within the practical writing system. All the same, numerous one combinations come consonant clusters rather than separate phonemes. A size of Khoisan apply force inventories ranges from either when pack when quartet for the Dahalo language of Kenya to 12 in the Northern & Southern Khoisan languages and up to 83 clicks (including Fifty elementary clicks) around !Xóõ (Ladefoged and Maddieson, 1996). In the latter language, complete 70% of words start using the apply force.

A Southern African Khoisan languages merely permit root-initial clicks. Hadza, Sandawe, and many of the Bantu languages also allow clicks inside roots, however in there are no language does the thrust close the syllable or even prevent the word.

A 5 mouse click releases by having dedicated symbols in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) are bilabial is different than what numbers of population associate using the kiss: the lips come pressed other-or even even-less flat together, when it is for a [p] or an [m], non fat when it is for the [w].

There are two or three less swell documented releases, like the loud laminar denti-alveolar lateral release (Ⅲ [triple pipe] in an ad hoc transcription), which contrasts by owning an apical postalveolar lateral pass inside Mangetti Dune !Kung; an abrupt sub-apical retroflex release <‼> around Angolan !Kung; & the "slapped" alveolar press within Hadza & Sandawe, in which a tongue slaps a bottom of a mouth when the release. (These distinctions could suffice for the Damin releases too.) Yet, a Khoisan languages come ill attested, & these are quite imaginable that, when it turn into better described, extra push button releases is incurred.

While a to the full push consonant (that is, an accompaniment + release) is transcribed, the accompaniment is written number 1: . A tie bar is non typically utilized within practice, & whenever a accompaniment occurs as elementary [k], it may every now and again exist as omitted too.

When a SAMPA encoding for IPA into ASCII doesn't have symbols for transcribing clicks, a projected X-SAMPA standard does: O\, |\, |\|\, =\, and !. Occasionally instead indicate ||\, #\ or even "\ for the alveolar lateral click. The Kirshenbaum system uses a different method: clicks are denoted by digraphs, with the click symbol "!" added to the stop homorganic to the release, but with the manner of the accompaniment. For example, /t!/ is a voiceless dental click, and /m!/ is a nasal bilabial click. (This is used in the literature on Damin.) However, the International Phonetic Association recommends using the IPA symbols in Unicode, or using the numbers which they have assigned to each symbol.

Accompaniments

Examples of click accompaniments. Data is primarily from Ladefoged; see references at individual language articles.

Some Khoisan languages are typologically unusual in allowing mixed voicing in non-click consonant clusters, such as , so it's not unexpected that they would allow mixed voicing in clicks as well.

There is ongoing discussion as to which of these are best analysed as consonant clusters, as in several cases this is not obvious. For example, some linguists feel that ejective clicks are not possible, and that those described as such are most likely clusters. In Ladefoged's analysis, if there is only a single segment, this is indicated by a single non-subscript letter for the accompaniment.

Of the languages below, , and Gǀui are Central Khoisan, Zhuǀ’hõasi is Northern Khoisan, and ‡Hoan is unclassified. These languages are spoken primarily in Namibia and Botswana. (See List of Khoisan languages for classification.) Xhosa is a Bantu language of South Africa; Dahalo is a Cushitic language of Kenya; Hadza and Sandawe are spoken in Tanzania; and Damin was an initiation jargon in northern Australia.

The four Dahalo accompaniments occur only with a dental release. Damin has only a nasal accompaniment with its normal clicks, but has a voiceless unaspirated release for its egressive click.

Releases

Inventories of click releases

There are seven known click releases, not counting slapped or egressive clicks. No single language is known to have more than five.

Names found in the literature

The oldest terms for the click releases, such as in Bleek 1911, are closer to modern terminology than much of what was published in between. Here are the terms used in some of the main references.