+-200 reel-to-reel audio tapes digitised

A selection of 200 rare audio recordings of endangered and extinct Southern Bantu and non-Bantu click languages, made by pioneering South African linguist, Ernst Westphal, between the 1960s and the 1980s.

Westphal was Professor of African Languages at UCT between 1962 and 1984, and is best known for his contributions to the studies of non-Bantu click languages, lumped together under a misleading cover term ‘Khoisan’ by other scholars. The Westphal sound files are precious because they include recordings of some languages, which are no longer spoken and of which there is no written record.

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