Northern Sotho

Why the name Sepedi is disputed

Missionaries of the Berlin Missionary Society, Alexander Merensky and Carl Knothe among them, documented Sepedi in the 19th century and built an orthography and a written tradition for it. That standard was later applied to many related Sotho-Tswana varieties across the former Transvaal, and the apartheid government imposed it as the written form of Northern Sotho. Speakers of other varieties, Khelobedu among them, argue that Northern Sotho or Sesotho sa Leboa better fits a language of many dialects.

The Interim Constitution of 1993 used Sesotho sa Leboa and the 1996 Constitution used Sepedi. In November 2025 PANSALB, the Pan South African Language Board, settled on Sesotho sa Leboa as the official name, covering 27 dialects such as Selobedu, Setlokwa, Sepulana and Sehananwa.

Which dialects fall under Northern Sotho

The Highveld-Sotho, Pedi included, are comparatively recent arrivals, mostly from the west and southwest of South Africa. The Lowveld-Sotho, among them Lobedu, Narene and Phalaborwa, combine arrivals from the north with Sotho settled there longer. As among other Sotho-Tswana peoples, many dialects are named after totemic animals or famous chiefs. Khelobedu is a written language; its speakers, the Balobedu, live around Greater Tzaneen and Greater Letaba.

What the letter š does in Sesotho sa Leboa

The Latin alphabet carries the language, with š for the sound [ʃ] and sh kept only inside the trigraph tsh, an aspirated ts. A circumflex on e and o marks their different sounds, mostly in reference books. Some prefixes, above all in verbs, are written apart from the stem. Urban varieties such as Pretoria Sotho have picked up clicks spreading from the Nguni languages.