Sotho language

Sotho
Sesotho
Pronunciation	[sɪ̀sʊ́tʰʊ̀]
Native to	Lesotho, South Africa
Ethnicity	Basotho
Native speakers	5.6 million (2001–2011) 7.9 million L2 speakers in South Africa (2002)
Language family	Niger–Congo Atlantic–Congo Benue–Congo Southern Bantoid Bantu Southern Bantu Sotho–Tswana Sotho
Writing system	Latin (Sotho alphabet) Sotho Braille
Signed forms	Signed Sotho
Official status
Official language in	Lesotho South Africa Zimbabwe
Regulated by	Pan South African Language Board
Language codes
ISO 639-1	st
ISO 639-2	sot
ISO 639-3	sot
Glottolog	sout2807
Guthrie code	S.33
Linguasphere	99-AUT-ee incl. varieties 99-AUT-eea to 99-AUT-eee

The Sotho Language
Person	Mosotho
People	Basotho
Language	Sesotho
Country	Lesotho

The Sotho language (/ˈsuːtuː/; also known as Sesotho, Southern Sotho, or Southern Sesotho) is a Southern Bantu language of the Sotho-Tswana (S.30) group, spoken primarily in South Africa, where it is one of the 11 official languages, and in Lesotho, where it is the national language.

Like all Bantu languages, Sesotho is an agglutinative language, which uses numerous affixes and derivational and inflexional rules to build complete words.

Classification

Sotho is a Southern Bantu language, belonging to the Niger–Congo language family within the Sotho-Tswana branch of Zone S (S.30).

"Sotho" is also the name given to the entire Sotho-Tswana group, in which case Sotho proper is called "Southern Sotho". Within the Sotho-Tswana group, Sotho proper is most closely related to Lozi (Silozi), with which it forms the Sesotho-Lozi group within Sotho-Tswana.

The Northern Sotho group is geographical, and includes a number of dialects also closely related to Sesotho-Lozi. Northern Sotho language. Tswana is also known as "Western Sotho".

The Sotho-Tswana group is in turn closely related to the other Southern Bantu languages, including the Venḓa, Tsonga, Tonga, and Nguni languages, and possibly also the Makua (zone P) languages of Tanzania and Mozambique.

Sotho is a tribal name, i.e. the name of the Sotho people or Basotho, while Sesotho is the term for the "language of the Sotho". Use of Sesotho rather than "Sotho language" in English has seen increasing use since the 1980s, especially in South African English and in Lesotho.

Dialects

A Mosotho woman holding up a sign protesting violence against women, written in her native Sotho language, at a National Women's Day protest at the National University of Lesotho. The sign translates as "if you do not listen to women, we will lose patience with you."

Except for faint lexical variation within Lesotho, and for marked lexical variation between the Lesotho/Free State variety and that of the large urban townships to the north (such as Soweto) due to heavy borrowing from neighbouring languages, there is no discernible dialect variation in this language.

However, one point that seems to often confuse authors who attempt to study the dialectology of Sotho is the term Basotho, which can variously mean "Sotho–Tswana speakers," "Sotho and Northern Sotho speakers," "Sotho speakers," and "residents of Lesotho." The Nguni language Phuthi has been heavily influenced by Sotho; its speakers have mixed Nguni and Sotho–Tswana ancestry. It seems that it is sometimes treated erroneously as a dialect of Sotho called "Sephuthi." However, Phuthi is mutually unintelligible with standard Sotho and thus cannot in any sense be termed a dialect of it. The occasional tendency to label all minor languages spoken in Lesotho as "dialects" of Sotho is considered patronising, in addition to being linguistically inaccurate and in part serving a national myth that all citizens of Lesotho have Sotho as their mother tongue.

Additionally, being derived from a language or dialect very closely related to modern Sotho, the Zambian Sotho–Tswana language Lozi is also sometimes cited as a modern dialect of Sotho named Serotse or Sekololo.

The oral history of the Sotho and Northern Sotho peoples (as contained in their diboko) states that Mathulare, a daughter of the chief of the Bafokeng nation (an old and respected people), was married to chief Tabane of the (Southern) Bakgatla (a branch of the Bahurutse, who are one of the most ancient of the Sotho–Tswana tribes), and bore the founders of five tribes: Bapedi (by Mopedi), Makgolokwe (by Kgetsi), Baphuthing (by Mophuthing, and later the Mzizi of Dlamini, connected with the present-day Ndebele), Batlokwa (by Kgwadi), and Basia (by Mosia). These were the first peoples to be called "Sotho", before many of their descendants and other peoples came together to form Moshoeshoe I's nation in the early 19th century. The situation is even further complicated by various historical factors, such as members of parent clans joining their descendants or various clans calling themselves by the same names (because they honour the same legendary ancestor or have the same totem).

An often repeated story is that when the modern Sotho nation was established by King Moshoeshoe I, his own "dialect" Sekwena was chosen over two other popular variations Setlokwa and Setaung and that these two still exist as "dialects" of modern Sotho. The inclusion of Setlokwa in this scenario is confusing, as the modern language named "Setlokwa" is a Northern Sotho language spoken by descendants of the same Batlokwa whose attack on the young chief Moshoeshoe's settlement during Difaqane (led by the famous widow Mmanthatisi) caused them to migrate to present day Lesotho. On the other hand, Doke & Mofokeng claims that the tendency of many Sotho speakers to say for example ke ronngwe [kʼɪʀʊŋ̩ŋʷe] instead of ke romilwe [kʼɪʀuˌmilʷe] when forming the perfect of the passive of verbs ending in -ma [mɑ] (as well as forming their perfects with -mme [m̩me] instead of -mile [mile]) is "a relic of the extinct Tlokwa dialect."

Geographic distribution

File:South Africa Sotho speakers proportion map.svg

Geographical distribution of Sotho in South Africa: proportion of the population that speaks Sotho at home.

Column-generating template families

The templates listed here are not interchangeable. For example, using {{col-float}} with {{col-end}} instead of {{col-float-end}} would leave a HTML "div" (division) open, potentially harming any subsequent formatting.

Column templates

Type	Family	Handles wiki  table code?	Responsive/ Mobile suited	Start template	Column divider	End template
Float	"Col-float"	Yes	Yes	{{Col-float}}	{{Col-float-break}}	{{Col-float-end}}
	"Columns-start"	Yes	Yes	{{Columns-start}}	{{Column}}	{{Columns-end}}
Columns	"Div col"	Yes	Yes	{{Div col}}	–	{{Div col end}}
	"Columns-list"	No	Yes	{{Columns-list}} (wraps div col)	–	–
Flexbox	"Flex columns"	No	Yes	{{Flex columns}}	–	–
Table	"Col"	Yes	No	{{Col-begin}}, {{Col-begin-fixed}} or {{Col-begin-small}}	{{Col-break}} or {{Col-2}} .. {{Col-5}}	{{Col-end}}

Can template handle the basic wiki markup {| | || |- |} used to create tables? If not, special templates that produce these elements (such as {{(!}}, {{!}}, {{!!}}, {{!-}}, {{!)}})—or HTML tags (<table>...</table>, <tr>...</tr>, etc.)—need to be used instead.

File:South Africa Sotho speakers density map.svg

Geographical distribution of Sotho in South Africa: density of Sotho home-language speakers.

Column-generating template families

The templates listed here are not interchangeable. For example, using {{col-float}} with {{col-end}} instead of {{col-float-end}} would leave a HTML "div" (division) open, potentially harming any subsequent formatting.

Column templates

Type	Family	Handles wiki  table code?	Responsive/ Mobile suited	Start template	Column divider	End template
Float	"Col-float"	Yes	Yes	{{Col-float}}	{{Col-float-break}}	{{Col-float-end}}
	"Columns-start"	Yes	Yes	{{Columns-start}}	{{Column}}	{{Columns-end}}
Columns	"Div col"	Yes	Yes	{{Div col}}	–	{{Div col end}}
	"Columns-list"	No	Yes	{{Columns-list}} (wraps div col)	–	–
Flexbox	"Flex columns"	No	Yes	{{Flex columns}}	–	–
Table	"Col"	Yes	No	{{Col-begin}}, {{Col-begin-fixed}} or {{Col-begin-small}}	{{Col-break}} or {{Col-2}} .. {{Col-5}}	{{Col-end}}

Can template handle the basic wiki markup {| | || |- |} used to create tables? If not, special templates that produce these elements (such as {{(!}}, {{!}}, {{!!}}, {{!-}}, {{!)}})—or HTML tags (<table>...</table>, <tr>...</tr>, etc.)—need to be used instead.

According to 2001 census data, there were almost four million first language Sotho speakers recorded in South Africa – approximately eight per cent of the population. Sotho is also the main language spoken by the people of Lesotho, where, according to 1993 data, it was spoken by about 1,493,000 people, or 85% of the population. The census fails, unfortunately, to record the at least five million further South Africans for whom Sotho is a second or third language. Such speakers are found in all major residential areas of greater Johannesburg, Soweto and Tshwane, where multilingualism and polylectalism are very high.

Official status

Sotho is one of the eleven official languages of South Africa, and one of the two official languages of Lesotho.

Derived languages

Sotho is one of the many languages from which the pseudo-language Tsotsitaal is derived. Tsotsitaal is not a proper language, as it is primarily a unique vocabulary and a set of idioms but used with the grammar and inflexion rules of another language (usually Sotho or Zulu). It is a part of the youth culture in most Southern Gauteng "townships" and is the primary language used in Kwaito music.

Phonology

Main article: Sesotho phonology

The sound system of Sotho is unusual in many respects. It has ejective consonants, click consonants, a uvular trill, a relatively large number of affricate consonants, no prenasalised consonants, and a rare form of vowel-height (alternatively, advanced tongue root) harmony. In total, the language contains some 39 consonantal and 9 vowel phonemes.

It also has a large number of complex sound transformations which often change the phones of words due to the influence of other (sometimes invisible) sounds.

Grammar

Main article: Sesotho grammar

The most striking properties of Sotho grammar, and the most important properties which reveal it as a Bantu language, are its noun gender and concord systems. The grammatical gender system does not encode sex gender, and indeed, Bantu languages in general are not grammatically marked for gender.

Another well-known property of the Bantu languages is their agglutinative morphology. Additionally, they tend to lack any grammatical case systems, indicating noun roles almost exclusively through word order.

See also

• Sotho calendar
• Sotho people
• South African Translators' Association

References

• Batibo, H. M., Moilwa, J., and Mosaka N. 1997. The historical implications of the linguistic relationship between Makua and Sotho languages. In PULA Journal of African Studies, vol. 11, no. 1
• Doke, C. M., and Mofokeng, S. M. 1974. Textbook of Southern Sotho Grammar. Cape Town: Longman Southern Africa, 3rd. impression. ISBN 0-582-61700-6.
• Ntaoleng, B. S. 2004. Sociolinguistic variation in spoken and written Sesotho: A case study of speech varieties in Qwaqwa. M.A. thesis. University of South Africa.
• Tšiu, W. M. 2001. Basotho family odes (Diboko) and oral tradition. M.A. thesis. University of South Africa

External links

• Sesotho Online A gentle introduction to the Sotho language and culture.
• Weblog on Sotho
• Translate.org.za Project translating Free and Open Source Software into South African languages, including Sotho.
• PanAfrican L10n page on Sotho Information on the language and localisation.
• Sotho language tutorial A beginner's language text, created for the US Peace Corps.
• the SeSotho book Another book developed by a Peace Corps volunteer

Software

• Spell checker for OpenOffice.org and Mozilla, OpenOffice.org, Mozilla Firefox web-browser, and Mozilla Thunderbird email program in Sotho.