Sesotho

Why the name Sotho can mislead

Sotho is also the name of the whole Sotho-Tswana group, so Sesotho proper is often called Southern Sotho or Sesotho sa Borwa. Within the group it forms a Sesotho-Lozi subgroup with Lozi of Zambia. Tswana is sometimes called Western Sesotho, and Northern Sotho is a geographical grouping of related dialects. English writers have used Sesotho rather than Sotho for the language more and more since the 1980s, especially in South Africa and Lesotho. Basotho can mean Sotho-Tswana speakers, Sesotho speakers or simply residents of Lesotho.

Why Sesotho barely varies by region

Hardly. Apart from faint differences inside Lesotho and heavy borrowing in the townships north of the Free State, such as Soweto, no dialect variation can be heard. Phuthi, an Nguni language shaped by Sesotho, is sometimes filed as a dialect called Sephuthi, but the two are not mutually intelligible. By one often repeated story, King Moshoeshoe I chose his own Sekwena speech over Setlokwa and Setaung when he founded the Basotho nation in the early 19th century.

What makes the sound system unusual

Sesotho has ejectives, click consonants, a uvular trill and a rare kind of vowel-height harmony, with some 39 consonant and 9 vowel phonemes. Stops come lightly ejective, aspirated or voiced. Like other Bantu languages it sorts nouns into classes that drive agreement across the sentence and builds words from long chains of affixes. It also supplies the grammar for much tsotsitaal, the township slang of southern Gauteng.