- Official language in
- Lesotho, South Africa
- Also spoken in
- Namibia, Zambia
- Script
- Latin
- Speakers
- 3.8M (2011)
Where it's spoken
Sesotho is an official language of Lesotho and one of the official languages of South Africa. In the South African national census, about three and a half million people gave Sesotho as their first language, and the census summary says that more than six in ten people in the Free State speak it.
A presentation by two South African education researchers lists the places where Sesotho is mostly spoken as the Free State, Eastern Cape, Gauteng, Lesotho, Namibia and Zambia.
Sources
- Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996 (as amended, 2012 revision) — Section 6(1), official languages
- Constitution of Lesotho, 1993 (reinstated 1998, with amendments through 2011) — Section 3(1), official languages
- Statistics South Africa (2012). Census 2011: Census in brief. Report No. 03-01-41 — Table 2.5 (Sesotho row, national column); census summary text on the Free State
- Makgabo, C. and Ramagoshi, R. Linguistic Features of Sesotho Languages (presentation slides, South African Department of Basic Education) — Slide "Where these languages are mostly spoken"
Script & pronunciation
An article on Sesotho orthography says that Sesotho vowels are written using the five vowel letters of the standard Latin alphabet. A presentation of the South African Department of Basic Education says Sesotho is written disjunctively, giving Ke a ja ("I am eating") as an example. The same presentation says the letters c and x are not used in Sesotho words except in exclamations. This app's cards follow the disjunctive style: its card for "Thank you" is Ke a leboha, with the pieces written separately.
Apart from a few place-name cards, this app's cards carry no separate romanization, so the card text is shown as written. The same article says that Lesotho and South Africa do not use the same orthography when writing Sesotho, and gives Modimo (South African orthography) and Molimo (Lesotho orthography), which both mean God, as an example. The app's cards use the spelling of South African Sesotho, and the card for the greeting Dumela notes that in Lesotho the same greeting is spelled "Lumela".
Sources
- Makgabo, C. and Ramagoshi, R. Linguistic Features of Sesotho Languages (presentation slides, South African Department of Basic Education) — Slides "The Sesotho Language Group" (written disjunctively) and "Alphabets" (c and x)
- Makutoane, T. J. (2022). 'The people divided by a common language': The orthography of Sesotho in Lesotho, South Africa, and the implications for Bible translation. HTS Teologiese Studies / Theological Studies 78(1), a7605 — Discussion of the vowel letters; the Modimo / Molimo example
Grammar essentials
A linguistic study describes Sesotho as having basic subject-verb-object word order and a very productive noun class and agreement system. Nouns come in singular and plural class prefixes: the study gives motho and batho for "person" and "people". The subject marker on the verb belongs to the same class as the subject, as in the study's example where the subject "children" and the verb marker ba are both class 2.
The same study says Sesotho has a different negative form for almost every tense and aspect form. For the present, this app's card Ha ke utlwisise ("I don’t understand") shows the pattern given in its note: ha, then the subject marker, then the verb stem with the final -a changed to -e. The affirmative card is Ke utlwisisa ("I understand").
Sources
- Demuth, K. (1992). Acquisition of Sesotho. In D. Slobin (ed.), The Cross-Linguistic Study of Language Acquisition, vol. 3, 557-638. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates — Section 1 (word order, noun class and agreement); section 1.1 (class prefixes, Table 1); section 1.2.9 (negation)
Politeness & etiquette
A free online Southern Sotho course from the University of South Africa says that ntate "father" is used for a man and mme "mother" for a woman of about your parents' age, and that the person who arrives somewhere is expected to greet those present first, whatever their status or seniority. This app's cards follow this: they advise adding ntate or mme when thanking an elder.
This app's cards give Dumela for one person and Dumelang for several people or one elder, and note that Dumelang is the plural-imperative ending -ng on the verb dumela, and that Sesotho uses plural forms to show respect to a single elder.
Sources
- University of South Africa, Southern Sotho free online course: Theme 1 - Greetings and Courtesies — Greetings and courtesies: ntate / mme; who greets first