ǂKxʼaoǁʼae
ǂKxʼaoǁʼae, or Gobabi ǃKung, is a southeastern dialect of the ǃKung language, spoken in Botswana and in Namibia by about 7,000 people. In Botswana, most speakers are bilingual in Naro or Tswana.
There are numerous spellings of the name, including ǁAuǁei, ǁXʼauǁʼe, and Auen. Endonyms are Juǀʼhoan, ǃXun in Namibia and ǂXʼaoǁʼaen, meaning "northern people" in Naro. It also goes by the names Gobabis ǃKung and Kaukau.
In Namibia, ǂKxʼaoǁʼae tends to refer literally to the ǃXuun speakers to the north in the Caprivi area. With the exception of a few cultural traits, speakers of ǂKxʼaoǁʼae in Botswana and those of Juǀʼhoan in Namibia argue that they are one and the same people, speaking one language, with some dialectal attributes.
The non-Latin characters used by the language predominantly refer to click consonants and follow the orthography by Patrick Dickens for Juǀʼhoan.
The limited data on these dialects is poorly transcribed, but as of 2015 fieldwork is in progress.
