20-529: Sotho ( / s ɛ ˈ s uː t uː / ) Sesotho , also known as Southern Sotho or Sesotho sa Borwa is a Southern Bantu language of the Sotho–Tswana ("S.30") group, spoken in Lesotho , and South Africa where it is an official language . Like all Bantu languages , Sesotho is an agglutinative language that uses numerous affixes and derivational and inflexional rules to build complete words . Sotho
40-591: A language or dialect very closely related to modern Sesotho, the Zambian Sotho–Tswana language Lozi is also sometimes cited as a modern dialect of Sesotho named Serotse or Sekololo . The oral history of the Basotho and Northern Sotho peoples (as contained in their liboko ) states that 'Mathulare, a daughter of the chief of the Bafokeng nation (an old and respected people), was married to chief Tabane of
60-635: A large group of Bantu languages , largely validated in Janson (1991/92). They are nearly synonymous with Guthrie's Bantu zone S , apart from the debated exclusion of Shona and inclusion of Makhuwa . They include all of the major Bantu languages of South Africa , Botswana , Lesotho , Eswatini , and Mozambique , with outliers such as Lozi in Zambia and Namibia , and Ngoni in Zambia, Tanzania and Malawi . Language groups are followed by their code in
80-597: 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. Sesotho makes a three-way distinction between lightly ejective , aspirated and voiced stops in several places of articulation . The standard Sesotho clicks tend to be substituted with dental clicks in regular speech. The most striking properties of Sesotho grammar, and
100-501: A set of idioms but used with the grammar and inflexion rules of another language (usually Sesotho or Zulu ). It is a part of the youth culture in most Southern Gauteng townships and is the primary language used in Kwaito music . The sound system of Sesotho 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
120-666: 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 Sesotho proper is called "Southern Sotho". Within the Sotho-Tswana group, Southern Sotho is also related to Lozi ( Silozi ), with which it forms the Sesotho-Lozi group within Sotho-Tswana. The Northern Sotho group
140-571: Is geographical, and includes a number of dialects also closely related to Sotho-Lozi. Tswana is also known as "Western Sesotho". The Sotho-Tswana group is in turn closely related to the other Southern Bantu languages, including the Venda , Tsonga , Tonga , Lozi which is native to Zambia and the other surrounding Southern African countries and Nguni languages , and possibly also the Makua (zone P) languages of Tanzania and Mozambique . Sotho
160-558: 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, 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
180-636: Is the root word. Various prefixes may be added for specific derivations, such as Sesotho for the Sotho language and Basotho for the Sotho people . Use of Sesotho rather than Sotho for the language in English has seen increasing use since the 1980s, especially in South African English and in Lesotho. Except for faint lexical variation within Lesotho, and for marked lexical variation between
200-602: The Guthrie classification . Both Shona and Makhuwa languages are included in this tree. This Bantu language -related article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Dlamini Dlamini (Also spelled Dhlamini ) is an African clan and surname , common in South Africa and Eswatini . It is the most common surname in South Africa. Most people whose surname is Dlamini are also members of
220-468: The Vaal Triangle – where multilingualism and polylectalism are very high. Sesotho is one of the twelve official languages of South Africa , one of the two official languages of Lesotho and one of the sixteen official languages of Zimbabwe . Sesotho is one of the many languages from which tsotsitaals are derived. Tsotsitaal is not a proper language, as it is primarily a unique vocabulary and
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#1732790298791240-760: The Xhosa , Zulu or Swazi branch of the Dlamini clan. In the early 19th century, the Swazi branch of the Dlamini clan's centre of power shifted to the central part of Eswatini, known as Ezulwini valley. This occurred during the rule of Sobhuza I . In the south of the country (present day Shiselweni ), tensions between the Ngwane and the Ndwandwe led to armed conflict. To escape this conflict, Sobhuza moved his royal capital to Zombodze . In this process, he conquered many of
260-672: 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 "Basotho", before many of their descendants and other peoples came together to form Moshoeshoe I 's nation in
280-682: The Dlamini clan. The Dlamini clan can be traced back to a man known as Dlamini I , who was also called Matalatala. He is said to have migrated with the other Bantu people from the Great Lakes Region of East Africa during the Bantu expansion . Matalatala is the source of all known Dlamini clan names. The Dlamini clan can be found in all of the ethnic groups of the Nguni branch of Bantu people in South Africa and Eswatini. Dlamini clan praises differ depending on whether they are Dlaminis from
300-708: 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 Sesotho is the term Basotho , which can variously mean " Sotho–Tswana speakers ", "Southern Sotho and Northern Sotho speakers ", "Sesotho speakers", and "residents of Lesotho." The Nguni language Phuthi has been heavily influenced by Sesotho; its speakers have mixed Nguni and Sotho–Tswana ancestry. It seems that it
320-413: 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 King Moshoeshoe I , his own "dialect" Sekwena
340-592: 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. Southern Bantu languages The Southern Bantu languages are
360-638: The other hand, Doke & Mofokeng claims that the tendency of many Sesotho 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". According to the South African National Census of 2011 , there were almost four million first language Sesotho speakers recorded in South Africa – approximately eight per cent of
380-530: The population. Most Sesotho speakers in South Africa reside in Free State and Gauteng . Sesotho 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 other South Africans for whom Sesotho is a second or third language. Such speakers are found in all major residential areas of Metropolitan Municipalities – such as Johannesburg , and
400-464: Was chosen over two other popular variations Setlokwa and Setaung and that these two still exist as "dialects" of modern Sesotho. 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 during Lifaqane (led by the famous widow Mmanthatisi ) caused them to migrate to present-day Lesotho. On
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