In her humble home on the red soil of the Green Kalahari, 92-year-old Katrina Esau listened intently as her two great-grandchildren practised the ancient N|uu language of South Africa's indigenous San people.

As the young children enthusiastically sang out phrases, Esau interjected occasionally to correct their pronunciation of the distinct sounds and deep clicks of her mother tongue, of which she is the last first-language speaker.

Visitors to the family home near the banks of the Orange River in the Northern Cape province also chipped in, with pride, a few words of N|uu in homage to the matriarch’s efforts to keep alive a language that researchers say is 25,000 years old and endangered.

On the walls, photographs of the quietly dignified and graceful Esau wearing a crown and collar of

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