Northern Sotho language

Northern Sotho
Sesotho sa Leboa
Native to	South Africa
Region	Gauteng, Limpopo, Mpumalanga
Native speakers	4.7 million  (2011 census)[1] 9.1 million L2 speakers (2002)[2]
Language family	Niger–Congo Atlantic–Congo Benue–Congo Southern Bantoid Bantu Southern Bantu Sotho–Tswana Sotho Northern Sotho
Dialects	Pedi (Masemola, Tau, Koni) Lobedu (Kgaga) Gananwa (Tlokwa) Kopa (Ndebele-Sotho) Birwa[3] Tswapong[3] ? Phalaborwa ? Kutswe (East Sotho) ? Pai (East Sotho) ? Pulana (East Sotho)
Writing system	Latin (Sotho alphabet) Sotho Braille
Signed forms	Signed Pedi
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
Glottolog	nort3233  (North Sotho + South Ndebele)[4]
Guthrie code	S.32,301–304[3]

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 (Sesotho sa Leboa, also known by the name of its standardized dialect Sepedi) is a Bantu language spoken primarily in South Africa, where it is one of the 11 official languages. According to the 2011 census it was the first language of 4,618,576 people in South Africa, principally in the provinces of Limpopo, Gauteng and Mpumalanga.^[5]

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. The spiritual father of Bapedi is King Sekhukhune who lived from 1814 to 1882.

Classification

Northern Sotho is one of the Sotho languages of the Bantu family. Northern Sotho is thus most closely related to Sesotho (Southern Sotho), Setswana, sheKgalagari and siLozi. It comprises several distinct varieties.

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

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

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.^[6]

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, sePulana, seKhutswe, seTswapo and also SePai (transitional between Sotho-Tswana and Zulu/Swati). 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 SePhalaborwa and the "East Sotho" varieties of SeKutswe, SePai, and SePulana unclassified within Sotho–Tswana. Their precise classification would appear to be a matter for further research.

Vocabulary

Some examples of Northern Sotho words and phrases:

Notes

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Northern Sotho language.

Northern Sotho edition of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

• 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

• 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

Languages of South Africa Pan South African Language Board Commission for Cultural, Religious and Linguistic Community Rights Department of Arts and Culture Official West Germanic Afrikaans English Southern Bantu Sotho–Tswana Northern Sotho (Sepedi) Southern Sotho (Sesotho) Tswana (Setswana) Nguni Southern Ndebele (isiNdebele) Swazi (siSwati) Xhosa (isiXhosa) Zulu (isiZulu) Venda (Tshivenḓa) Tsonga (Xitsonga) Recognised unofficial languages mentioned in the 1996 constitution Indigenous Khoi Nama San SA Sign Language Foreign German Greek Gujarati Hindi Portuguese Tamil Telegu Urdu Religious Arabic Hebrew Sanskrit Other LGBT slang Gayle IsiNgqumo