Tuu

Tuu, or Taa–ǃKwi, is a family of San click languages of southern Africa, made up of the ǃKwi branch, once widespread between the Vaal and Orange rivers, and the Taa branch of the Kalahari. The name Tuu comes from a word meaning person shared by both branches, and Proto-Tuu is thought to have been spoken near the Kalahari, since a word for the gemsbok can be reconstructed for it.

Together with ǂ'Amkoe, Tuu languages use bilabial clicks as ordinary speech sounds. Khoekhoe is believed to rest on a ǃKwi substrate, while Tuu took in Khoe words for parts of the body.

Tuu had no writing of its own, and after 1337 it survived as the oral speech of foraging bands whose lands were hemmed in by Khoe and Bantu herders and the colonial frontier.