Northern Sotho language

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Northern Sotho language edition of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Northern Sotho
Sesotho sa Leboa
Native to	South Africa
Region	Gauteng, Limpopo, Mpumalanga
Native speakers	4.1 million  (2006)
Language family	Niger–Congo Atlantic–Congo Benue–Congo Bantoid Southern Bantoid Bantu Southern Bantu Sotho–Tswana Sotho Northern Sotho
Dialects	Pedi (Masemola, Tau, Koni) Lobedu (Kgaga) Gananwa (Tlokwa) Kopa (Ndebele-Sotho) Birwa[1] Tswapong[1] ? Phalaborwa ? Kutswe (East Sotho) ? Pai (East Sotho) ? Pulana (East Sotho)
Official status
Official language in	South Africa
Regulated by	Pan South African Language Board
Language codes
ISO 639-2	nso
ISO 639-3	Variously: nso – Pedi etc. brl – Birwa two – Tswapong
Guthrie code	S.32,301–304[1]
Linguasphere	parts of outer language 99-AUT-e (seSotho-Setswana)

Geographical distribution of Northern Sotho in South Africa: proportion of the population that speaks a form of Northern Sotho at home.

0–20%   20–40%   40–60%

60–80%   80–100%

Geographical distribution of Northern Sotho in South Africa: density of Northern Sotho home-language speakers.

<1 /km²   1–3 /km²   3–10 /km²   10–30 /km²   30–100 /km²

100–300 /km²   300–1000 /km²   1000–3000 /km²   >3000 /km²

Northern Sotho is a designation in English, rendered officially and among indigenous speakers as Sesotho sa Leboa. Also confusingly known by the name of its major variety, "Pedi" or "Sepedi", Northern Sotho is a designated official language of South Africa, spoken by 4,208,980 people (2001 Census) in the provinces of Gauteng, Limpopo and Mpumalanga.

Urban varieties of Northern Sotho, such as Pretoria Sotho (actually a derivative of Tswana), have acquired clicks in an ongoing process of the spread of such sounds from Nguni languages^{[citation needed]}.

Classification[edit]

Northern Sotho is a language - or a number of neighbouring languages - within the Sotho branch of Zone S (S.30) of the Bantu family (classified in the Niger–Congo language phylum). Northern Sotho is thus most closely related to Sesotho or Southern Sotho, Setswana, sheKgalagari and siLozi. It comprises several distinct languages and/or dialects.

Lobedu (also Lovedu or Selobedu) exists only in an unwritten form and the standard Northern Sotho language and orthography is usually used for teaching and writing by this language community. The monarch associated with this language community is Queen Modjadji (also known as the Rain Queen). Lobedu is mainly spoken in the area of Duiwelskloof (now called Modjadjiskloof) in the Limpopo Province (former Northern Province). Its speakers are known as the Balobedu.

Sepulana also exist in unwritten form and form part of the standard Northern Sotho, Sepulana is spoken in Bushbuckridge area by the Mapulana people

Confusion of nomenclature with Sepedi[edit]

Northern Sotho has often been equated with its major component Sepedi, and continued to be known as Pedi or Sepedi for some years after the new South African constitution appeared. However, the Pan South African Language Board and the Northern Sotho National Lexicography Unit now specifically prefer and endorse the names "Northern Sotho" or "Sesotho sa Leboa".

The original confusion arose from the fact that the (now official) Northern Sotho written language was based largely on Sepedi (for which missionaries first developed the orthography), but has subsequently provided a common writing system for 20 or more varieties of the Sotho-Tswana languages spoken in the former Transvaal (including dialects of Sepedi). The name "Sepedi" thus refers specifically to the language of the Pedi people, while "Northern Sotho" refers to the official language of that name and to all the speech varieties it has been taken to cover. (It should be noted that the ethnic name "Pedi" also refers to a ruling group which established its dominance over other communities in the eighteenth century, and to the culture and lifestyle of that group and of those over whom it ruled.)

Other varieties of Northern Sotho[edit]

Apart from Sepedi itself, the other languages or dialects covered by the term "Northern Sotho" appear to be a diverse grouping of communal speech-forms within the Sotho-Tswana group. They are apparently united by the fact that they are classifiable neither as Southern Sotho nor as Tswana.^[2]

Very little published information is available on these other dialects of Northern Sotho, however, which have been reported to include: kheLobedu (khiLobedu or seLobedu), seTlokwa, seBirwa, thiPulana (or sePulana), Khutswe, seTswapo and also Pai (transitional between Sotho-Tswana and Zulu). The morphological and possible lexical variation among these dialects has led to the above assertion that 'Northern Sotho' is no more than a holding category for otherwise unclassified Sotho-Tswana varieties spoken in northeastern South Africa. Maho (2002) leaves Phalaborwa and the "East Sotho" varieties of Kutswe, Pai, and Pulana unclassified within Sotho–Tswana. Their precise classification would appear to be a matter for further research.

Vocabulary[edit]

Some examples of Northern Sotho words and phrases:

Notes[edit]

External links[edit]

• Northern Sotho language at Ethnologue (16th ed., 2009)
• Northern Sotho language in the World Atlas of Language Structures Online
• The Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Northern Sotho language
• Online Northern Sotho - English dictionary
• Online Northern Sotho explanatory dictionary
• Pan South African Language Board

Audio files in Pedi at Wikimedia Commons

Software[edit]

• Spell checker for OpenOffice.org and Mozilla, OpenOffice.org, Mozilla Firefox web-browser, and Mozilla Thunderbird email program in Northern Sotho
• Translate.org.za Project to translate Free and Open Source Software into all the official languages of South Africa including Northern Sotho
• Keyboard with extra Northern Sotho characters

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