91-Year-Old Woman Is The Only Person On Earth Who Can Speak World’s Most Endangered Language

In 2023, the University of Cape Town (UCT) honored Her Excellency ǂXuu Katrina Esau, affectionately known as Ouma Katrina, with an honorary doctorate.

Now 91 years old, she is the last remaining fluent speaker of the critically endangered N|uu language and one of South Africa’s living legends.

Thought to be extinct until fairly recently, N|uu – an ancient San language from the Tuu family – re-emerged in the Northern Cape during the late 1990s when people who were able to speak the language fluently were encouraged to contribute to its survival and revival.

At the time, there was a group of about 20 older people who could speak the language fluently, among them Ouma Katrina and her siblings. Sadly, Ouma Katrina is the last of the group still alive.

Despite this, Ouma Katrina has made it her life’s mission to preserve the language for the future by educating young people from her community in a tiny classroom at her house in Rosedale, outside Upington in the Northern Cape.

“There were only 20 of us who could speak the language and when no one else wanted to teach it to others, I decided that I would,” said Ouma Katrina, who never saw the inside of a school, worked as a shepherd, and cleaned kitchens on her hands and knees.

Her granddaughter, Claudia Snyman, is one of her keenest protégés and co-authored “Qhoi n|a Tijho” (Tortoise and Ostrich), a N|uu children’s book, with her grandmother in 2021.

During a special ceremony held in the Centre for African Studies Gallery on UCT’s upper campus, an emotional Ouma Katrina, with Snyman by her side, thanked UCT for recognizing her contributions.

“Thank you, UCT, for seeing your way clear to include me – an elderly woman who never learned to read,” she said.

The event also featured the unveiling of a N|uu-language dictionary, compiled with critical input from Ouma Katrina, and her capping by UCT Chancellor Dr. Precious Moloi-Motsepe. Dr. Kerry Jones, director of the African Tongue professional linguistics consultancy, highlighted the extensive community effort behind the dictionary.

“The work that we built on to create this publication is actually a 25-year labour of love where we had multiple community members contributing (quite literally) their voices in audio format to the project,” she said.

Apart from the hardcopy unveiled during the ceremony, a digital version of the N|uu dictionary and the Saasi Epsi mobile app are also available for free, thanks to funding from the South African government’s Department of Sports, Arts and Culture.

Associate Professor Lolie Makhubu-Badenhorst, director of the Multilingualism Education Project within UCT’s Centre for Higher Education Development (CHED), stressed the dictionary’s value as an academic resource to fill crucial gaps in the research of the South African cultural landscape.

Dr. Yvette Abrahams, interim director of the Centre for African Studies, underscored the importance of Ouma Katrina’s work in preserving the language amidst centuries of suppression.

San languages faced systematic suppression starting in the late 1770s, peaking during the apartheid era when children were punished for speaking any language other than Afrikaans at school.

“So, when we honour Ouma today, it is because we understand how far you have come to get here,” said Dr. Abrahams. “We understand what you have gone through to preserve the language. We understand that you came from a place of such suppression that people were afraid to even talk the language in the daylight. May this event be a forerunner to the beautiful future that we are going to build.”

These sentiments were echoed by Anthony Phillip Williams from Indigenous First Nation Advocacy South Africa, who appealed to researchers to respect the lived experiences of communities.

“Genocide is at the heart of why first-nation people, in our case San and Khoi people, don’t speak their languages and why these languages are almost extinct,” he said. Williams concluded with an emotional plea for UCT to assist in reviving their roots, cultures, and traditions.

“In the language, our identity is located. Won’t you help us find ourselves?”