Click languages

Click languages are amazing. Language development and speach pathology in general is really interesting as far as social observation goes and in regards to developing cultural identity. Thanks Wiki for letting me bite off some info.

Clicks are speech sounds such as English tsk! tsk! used to express disapproval, or the tchick! used to spur on a horse. In many languages of southern Africa, and in three languages of East Africa, they are ordinary consonants, found for example in the name of the language Xhosa. Clicks are best known in the West through the 1980 film The Gods Must Be Crazy. In 2003 clicks were in the news with an announcement that the original human language may have had clicks, but most linguists consider that to be utter speculation.

Technically, clicks are obstruents articulated with two closures (points of contact) in the mouth, one forward and one at the back. The pocket of air enclosed between is rarefied by a sucking action of the tongue. (That is, clicks have a velaric/lingual ingressive airstream mechanism.) The forward closure is then released, producing what may be the loudest consonants in the language, although in some languages such as Hadza, clicks can be more subtle and may even be mistaken for ejective stops.