"The language seems to be vanishing, as no children speak ǂHoan but acquire Kgalagadi as their first language instead, along with the national language Tswana (Batibo 2005)."

"No children speak ǂHua but acquire SheKgalaghari as their first language instead, along with the national language Setswana."

"ǂHoan is no longer passed on to the younger generations and is therefore no longer learnt as mother tongue (L1). The mother tongue of the majority of [ǂHoan] children is the Bantu language Kgalagadi (S.31d), which is also the lingua franca of the region."

"Most of the ǂHoan consultants are trilingual, i.e. they speak Gǀui (Khoe-Kwadi) and Kgalagadi (Bantu) fluently besides ǂHoan... all of them are able to understand Tswana to some extent, but almost none of the consultants are actively able to speak it.... We often observed that people try to hide their own or their children's 'Khoisan' origin, which indicates that they consider the 'Khoisan' languages of the area (i.e. ǂHoan, Gǀui and Taa) as not prestigious.... speakers of ǂHoan generally have a very positive attitude towards their mother tongue. However, since it is not rated positively in Botswana society to speak a Khoisan language, ǂHoan speakers decide not to speak their mother tongue to the younger generations, opting instead for the language of higher prestige, Kgalagadi."

"The ǂHua people have become highly dependent on the Bantu communities, particularly the Kgalagari, who are dominant in the area. This socio-economic dependence has given rise to extensive bilingualism, with more frequent use of Shekgalagari. As a result, there is a progressive shift to Shekgalagari, which has caused dramatic diminishing of the number of ǂHua speakers, due to lack of inter-generational transmission of the language. Thus, ǂHua is presently regarded as one of the most critically endangered languages in Botswana... According to the results of a field survey which was conducted by the present author in early 2003 in Dutlwe and Tshwane villages on 41 ǂHua respondents, the most frequently used language in all domains was Shekgalagari. In fact, Shekgalagari was more used than ǂHua even in family and cultural domains... the majority of people either do not speak [ǂHua] at all or speak it with difficulties. Most of those who said that they speak it fluently were adults and old people between 50 and 80 years... when the children are addressed in ǂHua, they usually respond in Shekgalagari."

"Given the social status and economic privileges associated with Shekgalagari, the areally dominant language, and Setswana, the national language, most ǂHua communities became bilingual, and even trilingual in the three languages, namely ǂHua, Shekgalagari and Setswana. Some individuals also became acquainted with other languages such as ǂGana (Khutle), which extends into the area, and some picked up Afrikaans from South Africa or the Afrikaner farms in the Ghanzi district."