ÃÂOrakobab, or Khoemana, also known as Korana, ÃÂOra, or Griqua, is a moribund Khoe language of South Africa.
"Khoemana" (from khoe 'person' + mana 'language') is more commonly known as either Korana (also ÃÂOrakobab, ÃÂOra, Kora, Koraqua) or Griqua (also Gri , Xri, Xiri, Xirikwa). The name 'Korana' reflects the endonym ÃÂOra or ÃÂGora , referring to the ÃÂOra people. Sometimes ÃÂOra is also known as Cape Khoe or Cape Hottentot, though the latter has become considered derogatory. The various names are often treated as different languages (called South Khoekhoe when taken together), but they do not correspond to any actual dialect distinctions, and speakers may use "Korana" and "Griqua" interchangeably. Both names are also used more broadly, for example for the Griqua people. There exist (or existed) several dialects of Khoemana, but the details are unknown.
ÃÂOrakobab (Khoemana) is closely related to Khoekhoe, and the sound systems are broadly similar. The strongly aspirated Khoekhoe affricates are simply aspirated plosives in ÃÂOrakobab. However, ÃÂOrakobab has an ejective velar affricate, , which is not found in Khoekhoe, and a corresponding series of clicks, . Beach (1938) reported that the Khoekhoe of the time had a velar lateral ejective affricate, , a common realisation or allophone of in languages with clicks, and it might be expected that this is true for ÃÂOrakobab as well. In addition, about half of all lexical words in ÃÂOrakobab began with a click, compared to a quarter in Khoekhoe.
In Korana, [oe] and [oa] can be pronounced as [we] and [wa].
There are four tones in ÃÂOrakobab: high (notated with an acute accent), rising (notated with a caron), mid (no accent), and falling (notated with a circumflex).
Reports as to the number of ÃÂOrakobab speakers are contradictory, but it is clear that it is nearly extinct. It was thought to be extinct until the discovery of four elderly speakers around Bloemfontein and Kimberley. A 2009 report by Don Killian of the University of Helsinki estimated that there were less than 30 speakers at the time. Matthias Brenzinger reported in 2012 that one possible speaker remained, but that she refused to speak the language. The discrepancies could be because the language has multiple dialects and goes by several names, with scholars not always referring to the same population. ÃÂOrakobab is listed as "critically endangered" in UNESCO's Language Atlas. The loss of this endangered language would have a significant impact on the heritage and culture of ÃÂOrakobab speakers.
Robust ÃÂOrakobab (before more recent language attrition) is principally recorded in an 1879 notebook by Lucy Lloyd, which contains five short stories; some additional work was done in Ponelis (1975). As of 2009, the EuroBABEL project is searching for remaining speakers.
The people and their language first began to attract scholarly attention in the 1660s, coinciding with Dutch colonial efforts in the Cape of Good Hope and the resulting armed conflicts. At the time, ÃÂOrakobab was widely spoken throughout the coastal regions of South Africa. After years of attrition during the colonial era to the 1930s, and under apartheid from 1948 to 1994, the language has all but vanished. Currently, speakers of ÃÂOrakobab are not only scarce but scattered, due to forced migrations during the apartheid era. This has rendered the language particularly vulnerable.