a people of
South Africa and southwest Africa, whose
principal occupation is tending cattle and curing (preparing and preserving) hides. They have a
pale reddish
yellow complexion and are about five feet in height. Hottentots were the earliest known inhabitants of what is now
South Africa. The Hottentots speak a
unique language, considered to be
independent from all other languages and families of
language. Its most distinctive feature is the clicks that occur at the beginning of over 75 percent of the words, made by pressing the tongue against the teeth or the sides of the upper jaw, or by doubling the tongue backward, and in all
cases following it with an explosive
noise. These clicks make it nearly impossible for a European or
English-speaking person to imitate the
language accurately. In
fact, the name
Hottentot means "stutterer" or "stammerer" and was applied to these people by the early
Dutch because of the clicking
speech. And that is so
rarefied that when I first heard those
boys talking, and so forth, I wot-notted anything they were saying, you know? It was just like listening to the Hottentots jabbering about the next feast of roebuck-I didn't have a clue.
members of a
south African and southwest African people
having a yellowish,
brown or brownish
gray skin.