Notes :Color words are frequently borrowed in Khoisan (and other African) languages, but the internal structure of the word in North and South Khoisan differs too radically from its structure in Khoe to be easily dismissed as a borrowing.
Notes :The root is rather widely spread in Peripheral Khoisan, but borrowing from Khoe cannot be fully excluded (since time-denoting lexicon is fairly often borrowed in those languages from neighbouring sources).
Notes :If we assume the hypothesis that the word is historically a compound (*!ʔu + *pha; *!ʔu = "hair"?), *pha would be comparable with forms like !Xóõ ʘʔa "to burn" or ǂHoan ʘui "fire" . No other connections can be supposed at this point.
Notes :Initial *c- in Khoe is most probably a former class prefix, as seen from the opposing form *s-á (fem., where *s- = *-s in the general feminine marker for nouns.) Much more problematic is the Sandawe stem, where the main emphasis is on the *-pV part (which also functions separately in verbal forms as the regular marker for the 2nd p. sg.), while initial ha- has been tentatively associated (e. g. by O. Dempwolff) with the deictic stem *ha- 'that'. However, given the similarity of Sandawe 1st p. pronouns with Khoe, it cannot be excluded that ha- is, in fact, the primary marker here.
