From what I remember of my major in linguistics at UCT (I was lazy and it was almost 10 years ago): The Khoisan languages have a greater density of phonemes (t

From what I remember of my major in linguistics at UCT (I was lazy and it was almost 10 years ago): The Khoisan languages have a greater density of phonemes (there are more identifiably different sounds) than in any other on the planet. This language [1] has 43 clicks, compared to the 3 of Xhosa and Zulu (actually it might be that by the system of measurement used in that article Xhosa/Zulu actually have more, but it still won't be as many). Speculation: I always imagined that this was similar to the story of Mitochondrial Eve, that these languages look like what language looked like 150 000 years ago while the rest of the planet's languages are fragments, kind of like we only have fragments of Mitochondrial Eve's DNA. Of course I have no idea what the current thinking is on ME, maybe that idea has been discredited. [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taa_language http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taa_language