"Sotho" is also the name given to the entire Sotho-Tswana group, in which case Sesotho proper is called "Southern Sotho". Within the Sotho-Tswana group Southern Sotho is also related toLozi (Silozi) with which it forms the Sesotho-Lozi group within Sotho-Tswana.
TheNorthern Sotho group is geographical, and includes a number of dialects also closely related to Sotho-Lozi.Tswana is also known as "Western Sesotho".
Sotho is the root word. Various prefixes may be added for specific derivations, such asSesotho for the Sotho language andBasotho for theSotho people. Use ofSesotho rather thanSotho for the language in English has seen increasing use since the 1980s, especially inSouth African English and in Lesotho.
A Mosotho woman holding up a sign protesting violence against women, written in her native Sesotho language, at aNational Women's Day protest at the National University of Lesotho. The sign translates: "If you do not listen to women, we will lose patience with you." (2008)
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 asSoweto) 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 Sesotho is the termBasotho, which can variously mean "Sotho–Tswana speakers", "Southern Sotho andNorthern Sotho speakers", "Sesotho speakers", and "residents of Lesotho." TheNguni languagePhuthi has been heavily influenced by Sesotho; its speakers have mixed Nguni and Sotho–Tswana ancestry. It seems that it is sometimes treated erroneously as a dialect of Sesotho called "Sephuthi." However, Phuthi is mutually unintelligible with standard Sesotho 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 Sesotho is considered patronising,[by whom?] in addition to being linguistically inaccurate and in part serving a national myth that all citizens of Lesotho have Sesotho as their mother tongue.
Additionally, being derived from a language or dialect very closely related to modern Sesotho,[b] theZambian Sotho–Tswana languageLozi is also sometimes cited as a modern dialect of Sesotho namedSerotse orSekololo.
The oral history of the Basotho and Northern Sotho peoples (as contained in theirliboko) states that 'Mathulare, a daughter of the chief of theBafokeng nation (an old and respected people), was married to chief Tabane of the (Southern)Bakgatla (a branch of theBahurutse, 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 ofDlamini, connected with the present-dayNdebele),Batlokwa (by Kgwadi), andBasia (by Mosia). These were the first peoples to be called "Basotho", before many of their descendants and other peoples came together to formMoshoeshoe 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 Basotho nation was established by KingMoshoeshoe 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 Sesotho.[citation needed] The inclusion of Setlokwa in this scenario is confusing, as the modern language named "Setlokwa" is a Northern Sesotho language spoken by descendants of the same Batlokwa whose attack on the young chief Moshoeshoe's settlement duringLifaqane (led by the famous widowMmanthatisi) caused them to migrate to present-day Lesotho. On the other hand, Doke & Mofokeng claims that the tendency of many Sesotho speakers to say for exampleke ronngwe[kʼɪʀʊŋ̩ŋʷe] instead ofke 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".
Geographical distribution of Sotho in South Africa: proportion of the population that speaks Sotho at home.
0–20%
20–40%
40–60%
60–80%
80–100%
Geographical distribution of Sotho in South Africa: density of Sotho home-language speakers.
<1 /km²
1–3 /km²
3–10 /km²
10–30 /km²
30–100 /km²
100–300 /km²
300–1000 /km²
1000–3000 /km²
>3000 /km²
According to theSouth African National Census of 2011, there were almost four million first language Sesotho speakers recorded in South Africa – approximately eight per cent of the population. Most Sesotho speakers in South Africa reside inFree State andGauteng. Sesotho is also the main language spoken by the people ofLesotho, where, according to 1993 data, it was spoken by about 1,493,000 people, or 85% of the population. The census fails to record other South Africans for whom Sesotho is a second or third language. Such speakers are found in all major residential areas ofMetropolitan Municipalities – such asJohannesburg, and theVaal Triangle – where multilingualism and polylectalism are very high.[citation needed]
Sesotho is one of the many languages from whichtsotsitaals are 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 Sesotho orZulu). It is a part of the youth culture in most SouthernGautengtownships and is the primary language used inKwaito music.
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.
[d] is anallophone of/l/, occurring only before the close vowels (/i/ and/u/). Dialectical evidence shows that in the Sotho–Tswana languages/l/ was originally pronounced as aretroflex flap[ɽ] before the two close vowels.
The most striking properties of Sesotho grammar, and the most important properties which reveal it as aBantu language, are itsnoun gender andconcord systems. The grammatical gender system does not encode sex gender, and indeed, Bantu languages in general are notgrammatically marked for gender.
Another well-known property of the Bantu languages is theiragglutinative morphology. Additionally, they tend to lack anygrammatical case systems, indicating noun roles almost exclusively through word order.
^To the extent that it even has several words that resemble Sesotho words with clicks:
ku kala to begin (Sesothoho qala[hʊǃɑlɑ])
ku kabana to quarrel (Sesothoho qabana[hʊǃɑbɑnɑ]),
one could just as easily say that these words were imported from Nguni languages (ukuqala andukuxabana, which is where the Sesotho versions come from), and the language does also contain words resembling click words from Nguni but not from Sesotho (such asku kabanga to think, cf. Zuluukucabanga).
^Webb, Vic. 2002. "Language in South Africa: the role of language in national transformation, reconstruction and development."Impact: Studies in language and society, 14:78
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.ISBN0-582-61700-6.
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
Translate.org.zaArchived 14 January 2007 at theWayback Machine Project translating Free and Open Source Software into South African languages, including Sesotho.
