Hadza

Hadza
Autoglottonym:	Haza, hazane
Pronunciation:	[ɦad͜za]
Ethnologue name:	Hadza
OLAC name:	Hadza
Location point:	3°45′ S, 35°10′ E
Genealogy
Family:	isolate
Genus:	Hadza
Speakers
Country:	Tanzania
Official in:	none
Speakers:	1,000
Writing system:	none
Codes
ISO 639-3:	hts

Hadza is a language isolate of Tanzania.

Location and Speakers

Hadza is spoken along the entire eastern shore of Lake Eyasi, at the base of the Serengeti Plateau in Tanzania, from Mount Oldeani in the north to the Isanzu agricultural areas in the south.

There is a small population of Hadza to the west of the lake, in Dunduina 'Sukumaland', but their number seems to be decreasing and many of them only speak Sukuma and Swahili.

There are approximately 1,000 speakers of Hadza, most now bilingual in Swahili. Other second languages include Isanzu in the south, Sukuma in the west, and to a lesser degree Datooga in the center (e.g. near the Yaeda Valley) and Iraqw on the margins of Iraqw territory. The northern Hadza area, around the town of Mangola, was largely monolingual until the introduction of Standard Swahili after independence.

As of 2005, language transmission was robust in the areas east of the lake. About 40% of speakers lived as full-time hunter-gatherers.

Classification

Hadza is a language isolate. Greenberg classified it as Khoisan due to its use of click consonants. If it were not for the clicks, it's likely that Hadza would have been classified as Cushitic.

Dialects

There do not appear to be any dialects of Hadza, presumably due to the mobility of its speakers. There are some regional differences of vocabulary, however, and speakers note that there are many more Bantu loans in the south.