Grammar, Orthography and Language Usage
What the grammar paper tests
This domain tests accurate Khoekhoegowab: click and tone conventions, vowel length, noun class and concord, sentence order, postpositions and punctuation. Khoekhoegowab is head-final: the basic order is subject-object-verb, and postpositions follow their nouns rather than preceding them as English prepositions do. Nouns carry gender and number: masculine singular -b, feminine singular -s, common singular -i, dual -kha and plural -n. Pronouns and verb forms must agree with that person-gender-number information.
Core rules
- Write the four click letters ǀ, ǁ, ǃ and ǂ as single symbols. Do not split a click from its accompaniment or insert a vowel between them.
- Mark tone consistently: acute for high, grave for low, circumflex for a falling contour; use a macron for vowel length.
- Choose the noun suffix that matches class and number, then make the concord agree.
- Keep the verb in final position in neutral clauses; use postpositions after the noun phrase.
- Punctuate direct speech and questions in the Khoekhoegowab way used in your set texts, not by copying English quotation conventions.
Worked example
You need the dual of khoeb (man, masculine singular). Reasoning: the stem is kho-; the masculine singular ending is -b; the regular dual ending is -kha, giving khoekha (two men). The plural with -n gives khoen (men, people). If a following verb must agree with a dual subject, it cannot take the singular concord used with khoeb. The mark comes from applying the suffix and then checking concord, not from guessing a plural form.
Traps that cost marks
- Omitting tone marks or vowel-length marks in a grammar answer.
- Confusing ǀ with ǁ or ǃ with ǂ.
- Using English subject-verb-object order in a neutral Khoekhoegowab clause.
- Putting a postposition before its noun.
- Matching a verb to the nearest noun instead of the subject.