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(Redirected from Sesotho language)
'Sotho' ('Sesotho', 'Southern Sotho' or 'Southern Sesotho'[1]) is a Bantu language spoken primarily in South Africa, where it is one of the 11 official languages, and in Lesotho, where it is the national language. It is an agglutinative language which uses numerous affixes and derivational and inflexional rules to build complete words.
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'Notes:'
★ All examples marked with ‡ are included in the audio samples. If a table caption is marked then all Sesotho examples in that table are included in the audio samples.
★ The orthography used in this and related articles is that of South Africa, not Lesotho. For a discussion of the differences between the two see Orthography below.
★ Hovering the mouse cursor over most ''italic'' Sotho text should reveal an IPA pronunciation key. Note that often when a section discusses formatives, affixes, or vowels it may be necessary to view the IPA to see the proper conjunctive word division and vowel qualities.
Sotho is a Bantu language, belonging to the Niger-Congo language family. It is most closely related to three other major languages in the Sotho-Tswana language group: Tswana, the Northern Sotho languages (Sesotho sa Leboa), and Silozi (or Serotse). ''Sesotho'' is, and has always been, the name of the language in the language itself, and this term has come into wider use in English and other non-Bantu languages since the 1980s, especially in South African English and in Lesotho. It is also referred to as ''Southern Sotho'', principally to distinguish it from Northern Sotho.
The Sotho-Tswana languages are in turn closely related to other Southern Bantu language groups, including the Venda, Tsonga, and Nguni languages.
Standard Sotho is remarkable in having little to no distinctive dialectal variation. Except for faint lexical variation within the territory of Lesotho, and except for marked lexical variation between the Lesotho/Free State variety, and that of the large urban townships to the north (e.g. Soweto) due to heavy borrowing from neighbouring languages, there is no discernible dialect variation in this language.
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 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 Pretoria, where multilingualism and polylectalism are very high.
Sotho is one of the eleven official languages of South Africa, and one of the two official languages of Lesotho.
Sotho is one the 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.
Main articles: Sotho phonology
Main articles: Sotho tonology
Bantu languages are agglutinative — words are constructed by combining discrete formatives (or "morphemes") according to specific rules, and sentences are constructed by stringing together words according to somewhat less strict rules. Formatives alone cannot constitute words. A study of the formatives is a study of the component parts of words.
These formatives may be divided generally into roots, stems, prefixes, concords, suffixes, verbal auxiliaries, enclitics, and proclitics.
Roots are the most basic irreducible elements of words and are immutable (except under ''purely phonetic changes''). Entire words are built from roots by affixing other formatives around the root as appendages;[2] each word (except with contractions and compounds) contains exactly one root, from which it derives its most basic meaning. Roots are the basis of the parts of speech.
The following words:
# to teach
# they taught y'all
# we teach one another
# they do not teach y'all properly/intensely
# an academic
# education
# learner (lit. "one who teaches herself")
are all formed from the root .
Although in some cases various phonetic processes may ultimately change the root's form in predictable ways (such as the nasalization in the last two examples) the root itself stays exactly the same.
There can be no doubt that words never emerged simply as roots. The root is a dead thing — the study of roots is primarily to aid the compilation of dictionaries, to further the study of comparative Bantu linguistics, and to help trace the evolution and connections of different languages. Many roots are shared by a wide range of Bantu languages.[3]
Some further examples of roots:
★ (Ur-Bantu
★ '-ntu') ⇒ person (especially a member of a Bantu language speaking culture)
★ (Ur-Bantu
★ '-iɣî') ⇒ water
★ (Ur-Bantu
★ '-twa') ⇒ a Khoisan person, South(ern)
★ (Ur-Bantu
★ '-kek-') ⇒ to laugh
★ (Ur-Bantu
★ '-ly-') ⇒ to eat, food
★ (Ur-Bantu
★ '-kulu') ⇒ large, size, one hundred
★ ⇒ shade/shadow, shadow of a human being (also their spirit, which becomes one of the ancestors when they die, or dignity/reputation; this is a very important concept in African Traditional Religion)
★ (Ur-Bantu
★ '-ŋkalî') ⇒ elder aunt — an important matriarchal figure in African Traditional Religion
★ (Ur-Bantu
★ '-ti') ⇒ to say
★ ⇒ God (traditionally never used in the plural[4]), ancestors (does not exist in the singular), cannibal/ogre
★ ⇒ field
★ (Ur-Bantu
★ '-elî') ⇒ moonlight
★ (Ur-Bantu
★ '-βwa') ⇒ dog
★ (Ur-Bantu
★ '-tano') ⇒ five
★ ⇒ to cut/chop down a tree
The distinction between roots and stems is fairly arbitrary. Though all roots are also stems, verbal stems often include suffixes, which roots never include. Additionally, the ending is included in the verb stem but not in the root (if it was truly part of the core root then it wouldn't be replaced in verb derivations and conjugations).
For example, from the verb root one may derive the following stems:
# ⇒ to see
# ⇒ to show
# ⇒ proof
# ⇒ to be visible
and these may all be listed under the same headword in a dictionary.
Prefixes are affixes attached to the beginning of words. These are distinct from concords, since changing the prefix of a word (such as the class prefix of a noun stem) may radically alter its meaning, while changing the concord attached to a stem does not change that stem's meaning.
: It is a programme
Concords are similar to prefixes in that they appear before the word stem. Verbs and qualificatives used to describe a noun are brought into agreement with that noun by using the appropriate concords.
There are seven basic types of concords in Sotho. In addition, there are two immutable prefixes used with verbs which are akin in function with concords.
: They shall design it
Suffixes appear at the end of a word. There are numerous suffixes in Sesotho serving varied functions. For example, verbs may be derived from other verbs through the employment of several verbal suffixes. Diminutives, augmentatives, and locatives may all be derived from nouns through the use of several suffixes.
Strictly speaking the final vowel in verb stems is a suffix, as it is often regularly replaced by other vowels in the derivation and inflexion of verbs and nouns.
: We know each other
Verbal auxiliaries are not to be confused with auxiliary or deficient verbs. They may appear as prefixes or as infixes.
These include prefixes such as used to negate verbs, and infixes such as used to form potential tenses.
The infix used to form the past subjunctive (not to be confused with the infix used to form the present indicative positive and the perfect indicative negative) merges with the subjectival concord resulting in what is often termed the "auxiliary concord."
: I am coming
: I shall not come
Enclitics (leaning-on words) are usually suffixed to verbs and convey a definite meaning. They were probably once separate words.
They may be divided into two categories: those which draw forward the stress (as normal suffixes), and those which don't alter the word's stress. The second type may result in words which don't have the stress on the penult (as is usual with Sotho words).
: He is no longer there (stress on the penult)
: Please keep quiet! (stress on the antepenultimate syllable)
There is only one proclitic in Sotho. is normally prefixed to nouns as a conjunction, to convey the same meaning as English "and" when used between substantives. Many Indo-European languages have a post-clitic with a similar meaning (for example Latin ''-que'' and Sanskrit च ''-ca'').
It may also be used to express the idea of "together with" and "even."
: My mother and father
: I met with her
: Even they do not believe
The Sotho language is spoken conjunctively yet written disjunctively (that is, the spoken phonological words are not the same as the written orthograpical words).[5] In the following discussion, the natural conjunctive word division will be indicated by joining the disjunctive elements with the symbol • in the Sesotho and the English translation.
: The•people of•the•family of•his they•judge•him (His family members judge him)
Certain observations about the Sotho word (and those of other Bantu languages in general) may be made:
Note that, unlike the Nguni languages, Sotho does not have rules against juxtaposing strings of vowels:
: ‡ (He•is•not•dressed) although the sequence (class 1 negative subjectival concord followed by present definite positive indicative marker) is usually pronounced as a long with a high falling tone, or simply as a short high tone .
Certain situations may make the word division complex. This can happen with contractions (especially with deficient verb constructions), and in some complex verb conjugations. In all these situations, however, each proper word has exactly one main stressed syllable.
Main articles: Sotho parts of speech, Sotho nouns, Sotho verbs
Each complete Sesotho word is composed of some part of speech.
In form, some parts of speech (adjectives, enumeratives, some relatives, and all verbs) are radical stems which need affixes to form meaningful words; others (possessives and copulatives) are formed from full words by the employment of certain formatives; the rest (nouns, pronouns, adverbs, ideophones, conjunctives, and interjectives) are complete words themselves which may or may not be modified with affixes to form new words.
The difference between the four types of qualificatives is merely in the concords used to associate them with the noun or pronoun they qualify. Since the simplest copulatives do not use any verbs whatsoever (zero copula), entire predicative sentences in Sesotho may be formed without the use of verbs.
Sotho is written in the Latin alphabet with a few diacritics used in Lesotho writing. Like most languages written using the Latin alphabet, it does not use all the letters and several digraphs and trigraphs represent single sounds.
As with almost all other Bantu languages, although the language is tonal, tone is unfortunately never indicated, and ambiguities in print are often mitigated by elaborating in a way that would have been unnecessary in speech (such as using absolute pronouns in addition to concords).
One issue which complicates the written language is the two divergent orthographies used by the two countries with the largest number of first language speakers. The Lesotho orthography is older than the South African one and differs from it not only in the choice of letters and the marking of initial syllabic nasals, but also (to a much lesser extent) in written word division and the use of diacritics on vowels to distinguish some ambiguous spellings.
When the symbol "š" is unavailable electronically, people who write in Lesotho Sesotho often use ''ts' to represent the aspirated alveolar affricate .
In word-initial positions,[7] a syllabic nasal followed by a syllable starting with the same nasal is written as an ''n'' or ''m'' in South Africa but as an apostrophe in Lesotho.
Note that, when not word-initial, Lesotho orthography uses an ''n'' or ''m'' just like South African orthography.
In order to distinguish between the concords of class 1(a) and the 2nd. person singular, Lesotho orthography (mis-)uses ''u'' to represent phonetic and for the 2nd. person, even when there is no chance of ambiguity.
: You are beautiful
: He/she is beautiful
: I did advise you too
: I did advise him/her too
In Lesotho, ''ò'' (for the two mid back vowels), ''ō'' (for the near-close near-back vowel), ''è'' (for the two mid front vowels), and ''ē'' (for the near-close near-front vowel) are sometimes used to avoid spelling ambiguities. This is never done in South African writing.
: to pour — to cross
: to sing a praise poem — to sew
These examples also have differing tone patterns.
Although the two orthographies tend to use similar written word divisions, they do differ on three points:
#More often than not compounds that are written as one word in South African Sotho will be written with dashes in Lesotho Sotho
: — leader
#The prosodic penultimate that is sometimes affixed to monosyllabic verbs is written with a dash in Lesotho
: — be!
#The indicative marker is inserted between the subject concord and the verb stem in different ways in the two orthographies. This is probably the most commonly encountered difference between the word divisions of the two orthographies
: — The cows are grazing
#The class 2a prefix is usually simply attached to the class 1a noun in South Africa but Lesotho orthography uses a dash
: father ⇒ (South African), (Lesotho)
Very often South Africans with recent ancestors from Lesotho have surnames written in Lesotho orthography, preserving the old spellings.
: Gloria Moshoeshoe, South African actor and talk show host
: Aaron Mokoena, South African and European soccer player
Like all other Bantu languages Sotho is an agglutinative language spoken conjunctively; however, like many Bantu languages it is written disjunctively. The difference lies in the characteristically European word division used for writing the language, in contrast with some Bantu languages such as the south African Nguni languages.
This issue is investigated in more detail in The Sotho word above.
''Roughly speaking'' the following principles may be used to explain the current orthographical word division:
#Prefixes (except noun class prefixes) and infixes are written separately on their own, and the root and all following suffixes are written together. This is most obvious in the writing of the verb complex. One exception is the 1st. pers. sg objectival concord, and another is the in the writing of the concords used with the qualificative parts of speech.
#With the exception of class 15, noun class prefixes are directly attached to the noun stem. These are an essential part of the lexicon, and not merely functional morphemes.
#Words which have been fossilised/lexicalised with historical prefixes are written as one word. This most frequently occurs with adverbs.
Of course, there are exceptions to these rough rules.
1. or ''Suto'', or ''Suthu'', or ''Souto'', or ''Sisutho'', or ''Sutu'', or ''Sesutu'' etc. by various authors and sources during various periods. The language's name has not changed, though.
2. Bantuists do it with multiple appendages.
3. Including the Ur-Bantu root
★ '-ntu' whence the name "Bantu languages" comes.
4. It is interesting to note that although there has historically always been a general belief among Westerners that African religions are polytheist, the plural of this word — — was specifically invented by Christian missionaries to aid in translating the Bible (which regularly speaks of "gods" — a concept foreign to Sesotho ATR).
Additionally, the noun is traditionally in class 1, but is used in class 3 by Christians and the Bible. There is, and has never been, any confusion among Basotho that the class 2 may be the plural of the class 1 since, in the same way that was never used in the plural, is never used in the singular (an ancestor is referred to as "one of the 'ancestors'").
5. This is a common situation in many (written) Bantu languages, as their orthographies were invented by Europeans who spoke isolating languages. Notice how the class 10 prefix is written separated from the verb stem (contrary to how the other class prefixes are indicated) because this is how infinitives are indicated in their languages. Zulu and other Nguni languages are written conjunctively, primarily due to the efforts of Doke and others.
Consider the following example:
:
: I will help you (I•FUT.+VE.INDIC•you•help)
This would be ''Ngizakusiza'' in Zulu.
The English free morphemes may usually be moved around to make valid statements, with some change in meaning:
: ''Help you I will''
: ''Will I help you(?)''
But this is absolutely impossible to do with the Sesotho bound morphemes.
:
★ ''Thusa o ke tla''
:
★ ''Tla ke o thusa''
6. The use of this term in Bantu linguistics means "formatives placed in the middle of a word" and not the more common "formatives placed in the middle of a morpheme." Bantu languages, being agglutinative, construct words by placing affixes around a stem, and if an affix is always placed after other affixes but before the stem (such as in the verbal complex) then it is usually called an "infix."
7. "Word" meaning the separately written elements in the disjunctive orthography — not proper Sotho words.
★ South African Translators' Association
★ Demuth, K. 1992. ''Acquisition of Sesotho''. In D. Slobin (ed.), The Cross-Linguistic Study of Language Acquisition.
★ Demuth, K. In press. ''Sesotho speech acquisition''. In S. McLeod (ed), The international guide to speech acquisition, pp 526-538. Clifton Park, NY: Thomas Delmar Learning.
★ 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.
★ Schadeberg, T.C. 1994-5. ''Spirantization and the 7-to-5 Vowel Merger in Bantu''. In Marc Dominicy & Didier Demolin (eds), Sound Change. Belgian Journal of Linguistics, 73-84.
★ Ethnologue report for Sesotho
★ Sesotho.web.za A gentle introduction to the Sesotho language and Basotho culture.
★ Weblog on Sesotho
★ Translate.org.za Project translating Free and Open Source Software into South African languages, including Sesotho.
★ PanAfrican L10n page on Sesotho Information on the language and localization.
★ Sesotho language tutorial A beginner's language text, designed for the US Peace Corps.
★ Spell checker for OpenOffice.org and Mozilla, OpenOffice.org, Mozilla Firefox web-browser, and Mozilla Thunderbird email program in Sesotho.
'Sotho' ('Sesotho', 'Southern Sotho' or 'Southern Sesotho'[1]) is a Bantu language spoken primarily in South Africa, where it is one of the 11 official languages, and in Lesotho, where it is the national language. It is an agglutinative language which uses numerous affixes and derivational and inflexional rules to build complete words.
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'Notes:'
★ All examples marked with ‡ are included in the audio samples. If a table caption is marked then all Sesotho examples in that table are included in the audio samples.
★ The orthography used in this and related articles is that of South Africa, not Lesotho. For a discussion of the differences between the two see Orthography below.
★ Hovering the mouse cursor over most ''italic'' Sotho text should reveal an IPA pronunciation key. Note that often when a section discusses formatives, affixes, or vowels it may be necessary to view the IPA to see the proper conjunctive word division and vowel qualities.
Classification
Sotho is a Bantu language, belonging to the Niger-Congo language family. It is most closely related to three other major languages in the Sotho-Tswana language group: Tswana, the Northern Sotho languages (Sesotho sa Leboa), and Silozi (or Serotse). ''Sesotho'' is, and has always been, the name of the language in the language itself, and this term has come into wider use in English and other non-Bantu languages since the 1980s, especially in South African English and in Lesotho. It is also referred to as ''Southern Sotho'', principally to distinguish it from Northern Sotho.
The Sotho-Tswana languages are in turn closely related to other Southern Bantu language groups, including the Venda, Tsonga, and Nguni languages.
Dialects
Standard Sotho is remarkable in having little to no distinctive dialectal variation. Except for faint lexical variation within the territory of Lesotho, and except for marked lexical variation between the Lesotho/Free State variety, and that of the large urban townships to the north (e.g. Soweto) due to heavy borrowing from neighbouring languages, there is no discernible dialect variation in this language.
Geographic distribution
Areas in which significant proportions of the population are Sesotho mother tongue speakers
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 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 Pretoria, 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 the 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 articles: Sotho phonology
Tonology
Main articles: Sotho tonology
Formatives
Bantu languages are agglutinative — words are constructed by combining discrete formatives (or "morphemes") according to specific rules, and sentences are constructed by stringing together words according to somewhat less strict rules. Formatives alone cannot constitute words. A study of the formatives is a study of the component parts of words.
These formatives may be divided generally into roots, stems, prefixes, concords, suffixes, verbal auxiliaries, enclitics, and proclitics.
Roots
Roots are the most basic irreducible elements of words and are immutable (except under ''purely phonetic changes''). Entire words are built from roots by affixing other formatives around the root as appendages;[2] each word (except with contractions and compounds) contains exactly one root, from which it derives its most basic meaning. Roots are the basis of the parts of speech.
The following words:
# to teach
# they taught y'all
# we teach one another
# they do not teach y'all properly/intensely
# an academic
# education
# learner (lit. "one who teaches herself")
are all formed from the root .
Although in some cases various phonetic processes may ultimately change the root's form in predictable ways (such as the nasalization in the last two examples) the root itself stays exactly the same.
There can be no doubt that words never emerged simply as roots. The root is a dead thing — the study of roots is primarily to aid the compilation of dictionaries, to further the study of comparative Bantu linguistics, and to help trace the evolution and connections of different languages. Many roots are shared by a wide range of Bantu languages.[3]
Some further examples of roots:
★ (Ur-Bantu
★ '-ntu') ⇒ person (especially a member of a Bantu language speaking culture)
★ (Ur-Bantu
★ '-iɣî') ⇒ water
★ (Ur-Bantu
★ '-twa') ⇒ a Khoisan person, South(ern)
★ (Ur-Bantu
★ '-kek-') ⇒ to laugh
★ (Ur-Bantu
★ '-ly-') ⇒ to eat, food
★ (Ur-Bantu
★ '-kulu') ⇒ large, size, one hundred
★ ⇒ shade/shadow, shadow of a human being (also their spirit, which becomes one of the ancestors when they die, or dignity/reputation; this is a very important concept in African Traditional Religion)
★ (Ur-Bantu
★ '-ŋkalî') ⇒ elder aunt — an important matriarchal figure in African Traditional Religion
★ (Ur-Bantu
★ '-ti') ⇒ to say
★ ⇒ God (traditionally never used in the plural[4]), ancestors (does not exist in the singular), cannibal/ogre
★ ⇒ field
★ (Ur-Bantu
★ '-elî') ⇒ moonlight
★ (Ur-Bantu
★ '-βwa') ⇒ dog
★ (Ur-Bantu
★ '-tano') ⇒ five
★ ⇒ to cut/chop down a tree
Stems
The distinction between roots and stems is fairly arbitrary. Though all roots are also stems, verbal stems often include suffixes, which roots never include. Additionally, the ending is included in the verb stem but not in the root (if it was truly part of the core root then it wouldn't be replaced in verb derivations and conjugations).
For example, from the verb root one may derive the following stems:
# ⇒ to see
# ⇒ to show
# ⇒ proof
# ⇒ to be visible
and these may all be listed under the same headword in a dictionary.
Prefixes
Prefixes are affixes attached to the beginning of words. These are distinct from concords, since changing the prefix of a word (such as the class prefix of a noun stem) may radically alter its meaning, while changing the concord attached to a stem does not change that stem's meaning.
: It is a programme
Concords
Concords are similar to prefixes in that they appear before the word stem. Verbs and qualificatives used to describe a noun are brought into agreement with that noun by using the appropriate concords.
There are seven basic types of concords in Sotho. In addition, there are two immutable prefixes used with verbs which are akin in function with concords.
: They shall design it
Suffixes
Suffixes appear at the end of a word. There are numerous suffixes in Sesotho serving varied functions. For example, verbs may be derived from other verbs through the employment of several verbal suffixes. Diminutives, augmentatives, and locatives may all be derived from nouns through the use of several suffixes.
Strictly speaking the final vowel in verb stems is a suffix, as it is often regularly replaced by other vowels in the derivation and inflexion of verbs and nouns.
: We know each other
Verbal auxiliaries
Verbal auxiliaries are not to be confused with auxiliary or deficient verbs. They may appear as prefixes or as infixes.
These include prefixes such as used to negate verbs, and infixes such as used to form potential tenses.
The infix used to form the past subjunctive (not to be confused with the infix used to form the present indicative positive and the perfect indicative negative) merges with the subjectival concord resulting in what is often termed the "auxiliary concord."
: I am coming
: I shall not come
Enclitics
Enclitics (leaning-on words) are usually suffixed to verbs and convey a definite meaning. They were probably once separate words.
They may be divided into two categories: those which draw forward the stress (as normal suffixes), and those which don't alter the word's stress. The second type may result in words which don't have the stress on the penult (as is usual with Sotho words).
: He is no longer there (stress on the penult)
: Please keep quiet! (stress on the antepenultimate syllable)
Proclitics
There is only one proclitic in Sotho. is normally prefixed to nouns as a conjunction, to convey the same meaning as English "and" when used between substantives. Many Indo-European languages have a post-clitic with a similar meaning (for example Latin ''-que'' and Sanskrit च ''-ca'').
It may also be used to express the idea of "together with" and "even."
: My mother and father
: I met with her
: Even they do not believe
The Sotho word
The Sotho language is spoken conjunctively yet written disjunctively (that is, the spoken phonological words are not the same as the written orthograpical words).[5] In the following discussion, the natural conjunctive word division will be indicated by joining the disjunctive elements with the symbol • in the Sesotho and the English translation.
: The•people of•the•family of•his they•judge•him (His family members judge him)
Certain observations about the Sotho word (and those of other Bantu languages in general) may be made:
- 'Each word has one part of speech, which usually appears at the end of the word, unless suffixed by enclitics'.
Not counting compounds and contractions, the word begins with zero or more proclitics, infixes,[6] and prefixes, followed by a stem, followed by zero or more suffixes and enclitics.
For example, in the word (I•greet•y'all) the stem is the verb stem (agree) surrounded by the subjectival concord (first person singular), the present definite positive indicative infix marker , the objectival concord (third person plural), and the verb suffix (causative, but in this case it gives the idiomatic meaning of "greet").
The phonological interactions can be quite complex:
: (He•shows•me) subject concord + marker + objectival concord ''-[N]-'' + verb stem (see) + causative suffix
Here the formatives are distorted by two instances of nasalization.
- 'Each word has one main stressed syllable'.
No matter how many prefixes, suffixes, enclitics, and proclitics are appended to the word stem the complete word only has one main stressed syllable. This stress is most prominent on the final word in the sentence.
: ‡ (We•failed to•advise•him because he•PAST he•COPULATIVE stubborn "he was stubborn")
: ‡ (We•shall•go if you•say.so)
Note the monosyllabic conjunctive .
Note that, unlike the Nguni languages, Sotho does not have rules against juxtaposing strings of vowels:
: ‡ (He•is•not•dressed) although the sequence (class 1 negative subjectival concord followed by present definite positive indicative marker) is usually pronounced as a long with a high falling tone, or simply as a short high tone .
Certain situations may make the word division complex. This can happen with contractions (especially with deficient verb constructions), and in some complex verb conjugations. In all these situations, however, each proper word has exactly one main stressed syllable.
Parts of speech
Main articles: Sotho parts of speech, Sotho nouns, Sotho verbs
Each complete Sesotho word is composed of some part of speech.
In form, some parts of speech (adjectives, enumeratives, some relatives, and all verbs) are radical stems which need affixes to form meaningful words; others (possessives and copulatives) are formed from full words by the employment of certain formatives; the rest (nouns, pronouns, adverbs, ideophones, conjunctives, and interjectives) are complete words themselves which may or may not be modified with affixes to form new words.
The difference between the four types of qualificatives is merely in the concords used to associate them with the noun or pronoun they qualify. Since the simplest copulatives do not use any verbs whatsoever (zero copula), entire predicative sentences in Sesotho may be formed without the use of verbs.
Orthography
Sotho is written in the Latin alphabet with a few diacritics used in Lesotho writing. Like most languages written using the Latin alphabet, it does not use all the letters and several digraphs and trigraphs represent single sounds.
As with almost all other Bantu languages, although the language is tonal, tone is unfortunately never indicated, and ambiguities in print are often mitigated by elaborating in a way that would have been unnecessary in speech (such as using absolute pronouns in addition to concords).
Lesotho versus South African writing
One issue which complicates the written language is the two divergent orthographies used by the two countries with the largest number of first language speakers. The Lesotho orthography is older than the South African one and differs from it not only in the choice of letters and the marking of initial syllabic nasals, but also (to a much lesser extent) in written word division and the use of diacritics on vowels to distinguish some ambiguous spellings.
| South African | Lesotho version | Example |
|---|---|---|
| , | , | — ''ho kalima'' to lend |
| — ''khotso'' peace | ||
| — ''sek'hona'' type of clay pot | ||
| — ''Motšeanong'' May month | ||
| — ''ho cha'' to burn | ||
| — ''moea'' air/wind/spirit | ||
| — ''ho utloisisa'' to comprehend | ||
| — ''ho bofshoa'' to be tied | ||
| — ''mpshe'' ostrich |
When the symbol "š" is unavailable electronically, people who write in Lesotho Sesotho often use ''ts' to represent the aspirated alveolar affricate .
In word-initial positions,[7] a syllabic nasal followed by a syllable starting with the same nasal is written as an ''n'' or ''m'' in South Africa but as an apostrophe in Lesotho.
| South African example | Lesotho version |
|---|---|
| truth | |
| and | |
| vagina (very crude) | |
| to scratch my itch |
Note that, when not word-initial, Lesotho orthography uses an ''n'' or ''m'' just like South African orthography.
In order to distinguish between the concords of class 1(a) and the 2nd. person singular, Lesotho orthography (mis-)uses ''u'' to represent phonetic and for the 2nd. person, even when there is no chance of ambiguity.
: You are beautiful
: He/she is beautiful
: I did advise you too
: I did advise him/her too
In Lesotho, ''ò'' (for the two mid back vowels), ''ō'' (for the near-close near-back vowel), ''è'' (for the two mid front vowels), and ''ē'' (for the near-close near-front vowel) are sometimes used to avoid spelling ambiguities. This is never done in South African writing.
: to pour — to cross
: to sing a praise poem — to sew
These examples also have differing tone patterns.
Although the two orthographies tend to use similar written word divisions, they do differ on three points:
#More often than not compounds that are written as one word in South African Sotho will be written with dashes in Lesotho Sotho
: — leader
#The prosodic penultimate that is sometimes affixed to monosyllabic verbs is written with a dash in Lesotho
: — be!
#The indicative marker is inserted between the subject concord and the verb stem in different ways in the two orthographies. This is probably the most commonly encountered difference between the word divisions of the two orthographies
: — The cows are grazing
#The class 2a prefix is usually simply attached to the class 1a noun in South Africa but Lesotho orthography uses a dash
: father ⇒ (South African), (Lesotho)
Very often South Africans with recent ancestors from Lesotho have surnames written in Lesotho orthography, preserving the old spellings.
: Gloria Moshoeshoe, South African actor and talk show host
: Aaron Mokoena, South African and European soccer player
Word division
Like all other Bantu languages Sotho is an agglutinative language spoken conjunctively; however, like many Bantu languages it is written disjunctively. The difference lies in the characteristically European word division used for writing the language, in contrast with some Bantu languages such as the south African Nguni languages.
This issue is investigated in more detail in The Sotho word above.
''Roughly speaking'' the following principles may be used to explain the current orthographical word division:
#Prefixes (except noun class prefixes) and infixes are written separately on their own, and the root and all following suffixes are written together. This is most obvious in the writing of the verb complex. One exception is the 1st. pers. sg objectival concord, and another is the in the writing of the concords used with the qualificative parts of speech.
#With the exception of class 15, noun class prefixes are directly attached to the noun stem. These are an essential part of the lexicon, and not merely functional morphemes.
#Words which have been fossilised/lexicalised with historical prefixes are written as one word. This most frequently occurs with adverbs.
Of course, there are exceptions to these rough rules.
Notes
1. or ''Suto'', or ''Suthu'', or ''Souto'', or ''Sisutho'', or ''Sutu'', or ''Sesutu'' etc. by various authors and sources during various periods. The language's name has not changed, though.
2. Bantuists do it with multiple appendages.
3. Including the Ur-Bantu root
★ '-ntu' whence the name "Bantu languages" comes.
4. It is interesting to note that although there has historically always been a general belief among Westerners that African religions are polytheist, the plural of this word — — was specifically invented by Christian missionaries to aid in translating the Bible (which regularly speaks of "gods" — a concept foreign to Sesotho ATR).
Additionally, the noun is traditionally in class 1, but is used in class 3 by Christians and the Bible. There is, and has never been, any confusion among Basotho that the class 2 may be the plural of the class 1 since, in the same way that was never used in the plural, is never used in the singular (an ancestor is referred to as "one of the 'ancestors'").
5. This is a common situation in many (written) Bantu languages, as their orthographies were invented by Europeans who spoke isolating languages. Notice how the class 10 prefix is written separated from the verb stem (contrary to how the other class prefixes are indicated) because this is how infinitives are indicated in their languages. Zulu and other Nguni languages are written conjunctively, primarily due to the efforts of Doke and others.
Consider the following example:
:
: I will help you (I•FUT.+VE.INDIC•you•help)
This would be ''Ngizakusiza'' in Zulu.
The English free morphemes may usually be moved around to make valid statements, with some change in meaning:
: ''Help you I will''
: ''Will I help you(?)''
But this is absolutely impossible to do with the Sesotho bound morphemes.
:
★ ''Thusa o ke tla''
:
★ ''Tla ke o thusa''
6. The use of this term in Bantu linguistics means "formatives placed in the middle of a word" and not the more common "formatives placed in the middle of a morpheme." Bantu languages, being agglutinative, construct words by placing affixes around a stem, and if an affix is always placed after other affixes but before the stem (such as in the verbal complex) then it is usually called an "infix."
7. "Word" meaning the separately written elements in the disjunctive orthography — not proper Sotho words.
See also
★ South African Translators' Association
References
★ Demuth, K. 1992. ''Acquisition of Sesotho''. In D. Slobin (ed.), The Cross-Linguistic Study of Language Acquisition.
★ Demuth, K. In press. ''Sesotho speech acquisition''. In S. McLeod (ed), The international guide to speech acquisition, pp 526-538. Clifton Park, NY: Thomas Delmar Learning.
★ 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.
★ Schadeberg, T.C. 1994-5. ''Spirantization and the 7-to-5 Vowel Merger in Bantu''. In Marc Dominicy & Didier Demolin (eds), Sound Change. Belgian Journal of Linguistics, 73-84.
External links
★ Ethnologue report for Sesotho
★ Sesotho.web.za A gentle introduction to the Sesotho language and Basotho culture.
★ Weblog on Sesotho
★ Translate.org.za Project translating Free and Open Source Software into South African languages, including Sesotho.
★ PanAfrican L10n page on Sesotho Information on the language and localization.
★ Sesotho language tutorial A beginner's language text, designed for the US Peace Corps.
Software
★ Spell checker for OpenOffice.org and Mozilla, OpenOffice.org, Mozilla Firefox web-browser, and Mozilla Thunderbird email program in Sesotho.
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