Sotho language

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Sesotho
Pronunciation:	IPA: [sɪ̀.sʊ́.tʰʊ̀]
Spoken in:	Lesotho and South Africa
Total speakers:	at least 5 million
Language family:	Niger-Congo  Atlantic-Congo   Volta-Congo    Benue-Congo     Bantoid      Southern       Narrow Bantu        Central         S group          Sotho-Tswana           Sesotho
Official status
Official language of:	Lesotho, South Africa
Regulated by:	Pan South African Language Board
Language codes
ISO 639-1:	st
ISO 639-2:	sot
ISO 639-3:	sot
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. See IPA chart for English for an English-​based pronunciation key.

Sotho (Sesotho, Southern Sotho or Southern Sesotho) is a Bantu language spoken primarily in South Africa, where it one the 11 official languages, and in Lesotho, where it is the national language. It is an agglutinative language which uses numerous affixes and derivational and inflexional rules to build words.

Contents 1 Classification 2 Dialects 3 Geographic distribution 3.1 Official status 4 Derived languages 5 Phonology 5.1 Historical sound changes 5.2 Vowels 5.3 Consonants 5.4 Phonology 5.4.1 Syllable structure 5.4.2 Phonetic processes 5.5 Tones 5.5.1 Characteristic tone 5.5.2 Distinguishing/semantic tone 5.5.3 Grammatical tone 5.6 Stress 6 Formatives 6.1 Roots 6.2 Stems 6.3 Prefixes 6.4 Concords 6.5 Suffixes 6.6 Verbal auxiliaries 6.7 Enclitics 6.8 Proclitics 7 The Sesotho word 8 Parts of speech 8.1 Nouns 8.1.1 Structure 8.1.2 Noun prefix system 8.1.3 Tones 8.1.4 Derivation 8.1.4.1 From nouns 8.1.4.2 From qualificatives 8.1.4.3 From ideophones 8.1.4.4 From verbs 8.1.4.5 Compound nouns 8.1.4.6 Foreign (non-Bantu or Khoisan) acquisitions 8.2 Pronouns 8.2.1 Absolute pronouns 8.2.2 Demonstrative pronouns 8.2.3 Quantitative pronouns 8.2.4 Qualificative pronouns 8.3 Adjectives 8.4 Relatives 8.5 Enumeratives 8.6 Possessives 8.7 Numerals 8.8 Verbs 8.8.1 Varieties 8.8.2 Tones 8.8.3 Verbal derivatives 8.8.4 Non-verbal derivatives 8.8.5 Inflexion during conjugation 8.8.6 Conjugation 8.8.6.1 Tenses 8.8.6.2 Moods 8.8.6.3 Implication 8.8.6.4 Aspects 8.8.7 Deficient verbs 8.9 Copulatives 8.9.1 Forming the copulative 8.9.2 The indefinite concord ho- 8.9.3 Conjugation 8.10 Adverbs 8.10.1 Adverbs of place 8.10.2 Adverbs of time 8.10.3 Adverbs of manner 8.10.4 The interrogative 8.11 Ideophones 8.12 Conjunctives 8.12.1 Forms 8.12.2 Functions 8.13 Interjectives 9 Concords 10 Orthography 10.1 Lesotho versus South African writing 10.2 Word division 11 Notes 12 See also 13 References 14 External links 14.1 Software

Notes:

All examples marked with ^‡ are included in the audio samples. If a table caption is marked then all Sesotho examples in that table are included in the audio samples.

The orthography used in this article is that of South Africa, not Lesotho. For a discussion of the differences between the two see Orthography below.

Hovering the mouse cursor over most italic Sesotho text should reveal an IPA pronunciation key. Note that often when a section discusses formatives, affixes, or vowels it may be necessary to view the IPA to see the proper conjunctive word division and vowel qualities.

[edit] Classification

Sesotho is a Bantu language, belonging to the Niger-Congo language family. It is most closely related to three other major languages in the Sotho-Tswana language group: Setswana, the Northern Sotho languages (Sesotho sa Leboa), and Silozi (or Serotse). Sesotho is the name of the language in the language itself, and this term has come into wider use in English since the 1980s, especially in South African English and in Lesotho. It is also referred to as Southern Sotho, principally to distinguish it from Northern Sotho.

[edit] Dialects

Standard Sesotho is remarkable in having little to no distinctive dialectal variation. Except for faint lexical variation within the territory of Lesotho, and except for marked lexical variation between the Lesotho/Free State variety, and that of the large urban townships to the north (e.g. Soweto) due to heavy borrowing from neighbouring languages, there is no discernible dialect variation in this language.

[edit] Geographic distribution

According to 2001 census data, there were over 3 and a half million first language Sesotho speakers recorded in South Africa, approximately eight per cent of the population. Sesotho is also the main language spoken by the people of Lesotho, where, according to 1993 data, it was spoken by about 1 493 000 people, or 85% of the population. The census fails, unfortunately, to record the at least five million further South Africans for whom Sesotho is a second or third language. Such speakers are found in all major residential areas of greater Johannesburg, Soweto and Pretoria, where multilingualism and polylectalism are very high.

[edit] Official status

Sesotho is one of the eleven official languages of South Africa, and one of the two official languages of Lesotho.

[edit] Derived languages

Sesotho is one the languages from which the pseudo-language Tsotsitaal is derived. Tsotsitaal is not a proper language, as it is primarily a unique vocabulary and a set of idioms but used with the grammar and inflexion rules of another language (usually Sesotho or isiZulu). It is a part of the youth culture in most Southern Gauteng "townships" and is the primary language used in Kwaito music.

[edit] Phonology

[edit] Historical sound changes

The phonetics of the most Sotho-Tswana languages are radically different from those of "older" or more "stereotypical" Bantu languages. Modern Sesotho in particular, has very mixed origins (due to the influence of Difaqane refuges) inheriting many words and idioms from isiZulu and isiXhosa (especially from the amaThembu people).

The Ur-Bantu prenasalized consonants have become simple stops, fricatives, and affricates. Thus isiZulu words such as intaba mountain, uthando love, ukulamba to become hungry, impuphu maize flour, ukulingana to be equal, inkomo cow etc. are cognates to Sesotho thaba, lerato, ho lapa, phofo, ho lekana, and kgomo.

This is further intensified by the law of nasalization and nasal homogeneity, making derived and imported words have syllabic nasals followed by homogeneous consonants, instead of prenasalized consonants.

As with most Southern African Bantu languages, the "composite" vowels *e and *o have separated to /ɛ/ and /e/, and /ɔ/ and /o/. These usually behave as two phonemes, although there are enough exceptions to justify the claim that they have become four separate vowels.

Additionally, the first-degree (or "superclose", "heavy") and second-degree vowels have not merged, resulting in a total of 9 vowels.

Uniquely among the Sotho-Tswana languages, Sesotho has adopted a click sound that is pronounced with three accompaniments (radical, aspirated, and nasalized). It most probably came with loan words from the Khoisan and Nguni languages, though it also exists in various words which don't exist in these languages and in various ideophones.

This click also appears in certain situations which are rare or non-existent in the Nguni and Khoisan languages, such as a syllabic nasal followed by a nasalized click (nnq), a syllabic nasal followed by a radical click (also written nq; this is not the same as the prenasalized radical click written nkq in the Nguni languages), and a syllabic nasal followed by an aspirated click (nqh).

[edit] Vowels

Sesotho has a large inventory of vowels compared with many other Bantu languages. However, the nine phonemic vowels are collapsed into only five letters in the orthography. The two close vowels i and u (sometimes called "superclose" or "first-degree" by Bantuists) are very high (with mild ATR) and are better approximated by French vowels than English vowels.

Vowels^‡[1]

/i/		/u/
ho bitsa to call	beet	tumo fame	boot
/ɪ/		/ʊ/
ho leka to attempt	pit	potso query	put
/e/		/o/
ho jwetsa to tell	cafe	pontsho proof	oiseau
/ɛ/		/ɔ/
ho sheba to look	bed	mongolo writing	board
/ɑ/
ho abela to distribute		spa

[edit] Consonants

The Sotho-Tswana languages are peculiar among the Bantu languages in that most do not have any prenasalized consonants and have a rather large number of heterorganic compounds. Sesotho, uniquely among the Sotho-Tswana languages, also has click consonants inherited from Khoisan and Nguni languages.

Sesotho makes a three-way distinction between lightly ejective, unvoiced-aspirated and voiced-unaspirated plosives in most places of articulation.

The fact that the b is fully voiced and relatively lightly pronounced means that it may sometimes sound like a voiced bilabial fricative /β/.

Plosives^‡

place of articulation	IPA	notes	orthography	Sesotho example
bilabial	/pʼ/	unaspirated: spit	p	pitsa cooking pot
	/pʰ/	fully aspirated: pull	ph	phuputso investigation
	/b/	this consonant is fully voiced	b	lebese milk
alveolar	/tʼ/	unaspirated: stalk	t	botala greenness
	/tʰ/	fully aspirated: tea	th	tharollo solution
	[d]	an allophone of /l/, only occurring before the close vowels (/i/ and /u/); the letter d is only used in South-African spelling	d	Modimo God
velar	/kʼ/	unaspirated: skill	k	boikarabelo responsibility
	/kʰ/	fully aspirated: kill; occurring only in old loanwords from isiZulu and in ideophones	kh	lekhokho the part of the pap that remains baked to the pot after cooking

Sesotho possesses four simple nasal consonants. All of these can be syllabic.

Nasals^‡

place of articulation	IPA	notes	orthography	Sesotho example
bilabial	/m/		m	ho mamaretsa to glue
	/m̩/	syllabic version of the above	m	mpa stomach
alveolar	/n/		n	lenaneho program
	/n̩/	syllabic version of the above	n	nna I
palatal	/ɲ/	as Spanish el niño	ny	ho nyala to marry
	/ɲ̩/	syllabic version of the above	n	nnyeo so-and-so
velar	/ŋ/	can occur initially	ng	lengolo letter
	/ŋ̩/	syllabic version of the above	n	ho nka to take

The following approximants occur. All instances of /w/ and /j/ most probably come from original close ʊ, ɪ, u, and i vowels or Ur-Bantu *u, *i, *û, and *î.

Note that when the bilabial approximant appears as part of a syllable onset the consonant before it is pronounced in a labialized manner.

Approximants^‡

place of articulation	IPA	notes	orthography	Sesotho example
bilabial	/w/	the letter o is used in Lesotho	w	sewa epidemic
lateral	/l/	never occurs before close vowels (/i/ and /u/), where it becomes [d]; the letter l is used for this in Lesotho	l	selepe axe
	/l̩/	a syllabic version of the above; note that if the sequence ll is followed by the close i or u then the second l is pronounced normally, not as a d	l	mollo fire
palatal	/j/	the letter e is used in Lesotho spelling	y	ho tsamaya to walk

The following fricatives occur. The glottal fricative is often voiced between vowels, making it barely noticeable. The alternative orthography used for the velar fricative is due to some loanwords from Afrikaans and ideophones which were historically pronounced with velar fricatives, distinct from the velar affricate. The voiced postalveolar affricative sometimes occurs as an allophone of the fricative.

Fricatives^‡

place of articulation	IPA	notes	orthography	Sesotho example
labiodental	/f/		f	ho fumana to find
alveolar	/s/		s	Sesotho
postalveolar	/ʃ/		sh	Moshweshwe Moshoeshoe I
	/ʒ/		j	mojalefa heir
lateral	/ɬ/	like to the ll in Welsh	hl	ho hlahloba to examine
velar	/x/	this is written kh in Lesotho	kg. Also g in Gauta and some ideophones such as gwa ("of extreme whiteness")	sekgo spider
uvular	/ʀ/	soft Parisian-type r; this is largely attributed to the influence of French missionaries at Morija in Lesotho	r	moriri hair
glottal	/h/	these two sounds are allophones	h	ho aha to build
	/ɦ/

Sesotho has a relatively large number of affricates. The velar affricate, which was standard in Sesotho in the 19th and early 20th centuries, now only occurs in some communities as an allophone of the more common velar fricative.

Affricates^‡

place of articulation	IPA	notes	orthography	Sesotho example
alveolar	/t͡sʼ/	unaspirated: its	ts	ho tsokotsa to rinse
	/t͡sʰ/	aspirated	tsh	ho tshoha to become frightened
lateral	/t͡ɬʼ/		tl	ho tlatsa to fill
	/t͡ɬʰ/	occurs only as a nasalized form of hl or as an alternative to it	tlh	tlhaho nature
postalveolar	/t͡ʃʼ/	unaspirated: church	tj	ntja dog
	/t͡ʃʰ/	aspirated: church	tjh	ho ntjhafatsa to renew
	/d͡ʒ/	as in virgin; this is an alternative to the fricative /ʒ/	j	ho ja to eat
velar	/k͡xʰ/	rare alternative to the velar fricative	kg	kgale a long time ago

The following click consonants occur. In common speech they are sometimes substituted with dental clicks. Even in standard Sesotho the nasal click is often substituted with the radical click. nq is also used to indicate a syllabic nasal followed by a radical click (/ŋ̩ǃ/), while nnq is used for a syllabic nasal followed by a nasal click (/ŋ̩ǃn/).

Clicks^‡

place of articulation	IPA	notes	orthography	Sesotho example
postalveolar	/ǃ/		q	ho qoqa to chat
	/ǃn/	this is often simply pronounced as a radical click	nq	ho nqosa to accuse
	/ǃʰ/	aspirated	qh	leqheku an elderly person

The following heterorganic compounds occur. They are often substituted with other consonants, although there are a few instances when some of them are phonemic and not just allophonic. These are not considered consonant clusters.

In non-standard speech these may be pronounced in a variety of ways. bj may be pronounced /b͡j/ (followed by a palatal glide) and pj may be pronounced /p͡jʼ/. pj may also sometimes be pronounced /p͡tʃʼ/, which may alternatively be written ptj, though this is not to be considered standard.

Heterorganic compounds^‡

place of articulation	IPA	notes	orthography	Sesotho example
bilabial-palatal ejective	/p͡ʃʼ/	alternative tj	pj	ho pjatla to cook well
	/p͡ʃʰ/	aspirated version of the above; alternative tjh	pjh	mpjhe ostrich
	/b͡ʒ/	alternative j	bj	ho bjarana to break apart like a clay pot
dentilabial-palatal	/f͡ʃ/	only found in short passives of verbs ending with fa; alternative sh	fj	ho bofjwa to be tied

[edit] Phonology

[edit] Syllable structure

Sesotho syllables tend to be open, with syllabic nasals and the syllabic approximant l allowed. Unlike almost all other Bantu languages, Sesotho does not have prenasalized consonants (NC).

1. The onset may be any consonant (C), a labialized consonant (Cw), an approximant (A), or a vowel (V).
2. The nucleus may be a vowel, a syllabic nasal (N), or the syllabic l (L).
3. No codas are allowed.

The possible syllables are:

• V ho etsa to do
• CV fi! ideophone of sudden darkness
• CwV ho tswa to emerge
• AV wena you
• N nna I
• L lebollo circumcision as part of male initiation

Note that heterorganic compounds count as single consonants, not consonant clusters.

Additionally, the following phonotactic restrictions are applicable:

1. A consonant may not be followed by the palatal approximant y (i.e. Cy is not a valid onset).
2. The palatal approximant may not be followed by a close front vowel.
3. The bilabial approximant w may not followed by a back vowel at any time.

Syllabic l occurs only due to a vowel being elided between two l's:

*molelo ⇒ mollo fire (cf Setswana molelo, isiZulu umlilo)

*ho lela ⇒ ho lla to cry (cf Setswana go lela, isiXhosa ukulila, Tshivenda u lila)

isiZulu ukuphuma to emerge ⇒ ukuphumelela to succeed ⇒ Sesotho ho phomella

There are no long vowels in Sesotho, the rule being that juxtaposed vowels form separate syllables (which may sound like long vowels with undulating tones during natural fast speech). Originally there might have been a consonant between vowels which was eventually elided that prevented coalescence (Carl Meinhof postulates the voiced velar fricative *ɣ in his Ur-Bantu).

Other Bantu languages have rules against vowel juxtaposition, often inserting an intermediate approximant if necessary.

Sesotho Gauteng ⇒ isiXhosa Erhawudeni

[edit] Phonetic processes

Vowels and consonants very often influence one another resulting in predictable sound changes. Most of these changes are either vowels changing vowels, nasals changing consonants, or approximants changing consonants.

• Nasalization (alternatively Nasal permutation or Strengthening) is a process in Bantu languages by which, in certain circumstances, a prefixed nasal becomes assimilated to a succeeding consonant and causes changes in the form of the phone to which it is prefixed. In this article it is marked in a prefix by "[N]." In Sesotho it usually occurs in the formation of class 9 and 10 nouns, the formation of some class 6 plurals, in the use of the objectival concord of the first person singular, in the use of the adjectival and enumerative concords of some noun classes, and in the forming of reflexive verbs (with the reflexive prefix). Very roughly speaking, voiced consonants become devoiced and fricatives (except kg^[2]) lose their fricative quality.
  • Vowels and the approximants y and w get a k in front of them
  • Voiced plosives become ejective:

  b ⇒ p

  l/d ⇒ t

  • Fricatives become aspirated:

  f ⇒ ph

  r ⇒ th

  s ⇒ tsh

  sh ⇒ tjh

  hl ⇒ tlh (except for adjectives)

  • h becomes kg
  • j becomes tj.
  The syllabic nasal causing the change is usually dropped, except for monosyllabic stems and the first person objectival concord. Reflexive verbs don't show a nasal.

  ho araba to answer ⇒ karabo response, ho nkaraba to answer me, and ho ikaraba to answer oneself

  ho fa to give ⇒ mpho gift, ho mpha to give me, and ho ipha to give oneself

  Other changes may occur due to contractions in verb derivations:

  ho bona to see ⇒ ho bontsha to cause to see (causative -bon- + -isa)

  Nasal homogeneity consists of two points:
  1. When a consonant is preceded by a (visible or invisible) nasal it will undergo nasalization, if it supports it.
  2. When a nasal is immediately followed by another consonant with no vowel betwixt them, the nasal will change to a nasal in the same approximate position as the following consonant, after the consonant has undergone nasal permutation. If the consonant is already a nasal then the previous nasal will simply change to the same.
• Palatalization is a process in certain Bantu languages where a consonant becomes a palatal consonant.

  In Sesotho it usually occurs with the short form of passive verbs and the diminutives of nouns, adjectives, and relatives.

  • Labials:

  p ⇒ pj/tj

  ph ⇒ pjh/tjh

  b ⇒ bj/j

  f ⇒ fj/sh

  • Alveolars:

  t ⇒ tj

  th ⇒ tjh

  l ⇒ j

  • The nasals become ny:

  n, m, and ng ⇒ ny

  ho lefa to pay ⇒ ho lefjwa/ho leshwa to be paid

• Alveolarization is a process whereby a certain consonant becomes an alveolar consonant. It occurs in noun diminutives, the diminutives of colour adjectives, and in the pronouns and concords of noun classes with a di or di[N] prefix. It results in either ts or tsh.
  • p, b, and l/d become ts
  • ph, f, and r become tsh

  -kgwadi black with white spots ⇒ -kgwatsana (dim.)

  diketso tsa hao your actions

  Other changes may occur due to phonological interactions in verbal derivatives:

  ho botsa to ask ⇒ ho botsetsa to ask on behalf of (applied -bots- + -ela)

• Velarization in Sesotho is a process whereby certain sounds become velar consonants due to the intrusion of an approximant. It occurs with verb passives, noun diminutives, the diminutives of relatives, and the formation of some class 1 and 3 prefixes.
  • m becomes ng
  • ny becomes nng

  ho senya to destroy ⇒ ho senngwa to be destroyed (short passive -seny- + -wa)

  Class 1 mo- + -aha ⇒ ngwaha year (cf Kiswahili mwaka)

• Vowel raising is a common process in most Southern African Bantu languages, in which the open-mid vowels become close-mid. In the 9-vowel Sotho-Tswana languages, a much less common process also occurs where the near-close vowels become raised to a position slightly lower than the close vowels (closer to the English ea and ou than the very high Sesotho vowels i and u) without ATR.
  • /ɛ/ becomes /e/ and /ɔ/ becomes /o/ under the influence of following close vowels or consonants that contain "hidden" close vowels.
  • Vowel raising of the open-mid vowels (file info) — play in browser (beta)
    • Audio sample of the examples
    • Problems listening to the file? See media help.

  ho tsheha^‡ to laugh ([hʊt͡sʰɛhɑ]) ⇒ ho tshehisa^‡ to cause to laugh ([hʊt͡sʰehisɑ])

  ke a bona^‡ I see ([kʼɪ'ɑbɔnɑ]) ⇒ ke bone^‡ I saw ([kʼɪbonɪ])

  ho kena^‡ to enter ([hʊkʼɛnɑ]) ⇒ ho kenya^‡ to insert ([hʊkʼeɲɑ])

  These changes are usually recursive to varying depths:

  diphoofolo^‡ animals ([dipʰɔ'ɔfɔlɔ]) ⇒ diphoofolong^‡ by the animals ([dipʰɔ'ɔfoloŋ̩])

  These vowels can occur phonemically, however, and are thus considered to be separate phonemes:

  maele wisdom [mɑ'ele]

  • Under less much common circumstances, /ɪ/ becomes [iˌ] and /ʊ/ becomes [uˌ]. These changes are influenced by surrounding vowels and tones. The noun Maloti has this vowel seemingly without being derived from another word.
  • Vowel raising of the near-close vowels (file info) — play in browser (beta)
    • Audio sample of the examples
    • Problems listening to the file? See media help.

  ho tshela to pass over ⇒ ho tshedisa to comfort

  ho loma to itch ⇒ selomi period pains

  Since these changes are allophonic, the Sotho-Tswana languages are rarely said to have 11 vowels.

• Labialization is a modification of a consonant due to the action of a bilabial /w/ element which persists throughout the articulation of the consonant and is not merely a following semivowel. This labialization results in the consonant being pronounced with rounded lips (but with no velarization) and with attenuated high frequencies (especially noticeable with fricatives and aspirated consonants). It may be traced to an original /ʊ/ or /u/ being "absorbed" into the preceding consonant when the syllable is followed by another vowel. The consonant is labialized and the transition from the labialized syllable onset to the nucleus vowel sounds like a bilabial semivowel. Unlike in languages such as Chishona and Tshivenda, Sesotho labialization does not result in "whistling" of any consonants. Almost all consonants may be labialized (indicated in the orthography by following the symbol with "w"), the exceptions being labial plosives and fricatives (which become palatalized), the bilabial and palatal nasals (which become velarized), and the voiced alveolar /d/ allophone of /l/ (which would become alveolarized instead). Additionally, syllabic nasals (where nasalization results in a labialized nk instead) and the syllabic l (which is always followed by the non-syllabic l) are never directly labialized. Note that the unvoiced heterorganic doubled articulant fricative fj only occurs labialized (only as fjw). Due to the inherent bilabial semivowel, labialized consonants never appear before back vowels.^[3]

[edit] Tones

Like most other Bantu languages, Sesotho is a tonal language, employing 2 basic tones, high [ ¯ ] and low [ _ ].

Bantu languages may be roughly divided into two groups with differing tones. When a word or formative in a language in one group has a certain tone pattern, a cognate word or formative in a language in the other group may be pronounced with the opposite tonal pattern (high tones being substituted for low, and low for high). This is evident, for example, in the tones of the noun class prefixes.

The tone of a syllable is carried by the vowel, or the nasal, if the nasal is syllabic. Syllabic l (and, in Northern Sotho and Setswana, syllabic r) never carry any kind of independent tone, their "tone" being the same as one of the syllables around it.

The language has simple basic tone types, but has rather complex tonal rules (contrast this with many Chinese languages, which have many tone types but relatively simple Tone Sandhi rules). Broadly speaking, low toned verbs may instead be said to have a null tone [ ø ] (which if, after applying all the rules, remains null, is rendered as a low tone). Additionally, in certain situations a lowered high tone (or "mid tone") [ – ] may be heard, and in other situations (not just in slow speech) rising [ / ] and falling [ \ ] tones may be heard. Thus broadly speaking, Sesotho may be said to have 6 tones: high, low, mid, null, rising, and falling [ ¯ _ – ø / \ ], but ultimately each syllable of every morpheme (before being combined with other formatives) may be completely described as having only high and low tones.^[4]

Downdrift, where the absolute pitch (not tones) of the speaker's voice is gradually decreased as the sentence continues (resulting in initial low tones being pronounced higher than final high tones), is a feature during natural speech.

A classic example of a nasal carrying a tone:

To form a locative from a noun, one of the possible procedures involves simply suffixing an -ng (with a low tone) to the noun. To form the locative meaning "on the grass" one suffixes -ng to the word jwang^‡ [ _ ¯ ], giving jwanng^‡ [ _ ¯ _ ] ([ʒʷɑn̩n̩]), with the two last nasal syllables have contrasting tones.

Names, being nouns, frequently have a tonal pattern distinct from the noun:

The Sesotho word for "mother/missus/ma'am" is mme^‡ [ _ ¯ ], but a child would call their own mother mme^‡ [ ¯ _ ], using it as a first name. Also, ntate^‡ [ _ _ ¯ ] means father/mister/sir, while ntate^‡ [ _ ¯ ¯ ] might be used by a small child to say "dad."

The purpose of the tones can fall into at least one of the following categories:

[edit] Characteristic tone

Each complete Sesotho word has an inherent tone for its syllables, which, although not essential to forming correct speech, will betray a foreign accent:

motho^‡ [ _ _ ] human being

ntja^‡ [ _ ¯ ] dog

mosotho^‡ [ _ ¯ _ ] a Sesotho speaking person

lerata^‡ [ _ _ ¯ ] noise

Various factors mean that the tones of a word may change, but the characteristic tone in a Sesotho word is found when the word is the last in a question sentence not employing the interrogative adverb na?. In this situation, downdrift is greatly attenuated, the penultimate syllable of the sentence is short (although the vowel of the last syllable may completely cut), and the tone of the last word is preserved. For verbs this may be found by employing the verb in the positive future indicative tense.

O batla ho eba setsebi^‡ [ _ \ _ ] You want to be a scientist

Na o batla ho eba setsebi?^‡ [ _ \ / ] Do you want to be a scientist?

O batla ho eba setsebi?^‡ [ _ ¯ ¯ ] Do you want to be a scientist?

[edit] Distinguishing/semantic tone

Often, a few words may be composed of the exact same syllables/phonemes, yet have different characteristic tones (the H verbs have low final tone due to the finality restriction):

ho aka^‡ [ _ ¯ _ ] to kiss

ho aka^‡ [ _ _ _ ] to lie to

jwang^‡ [ _ ¯ ] grass

jwang^‡ [ ¯ _ ] how?

ho tena^‡ [ _ ¯ _ ] to wear

ho tena^‡ [ _ _ _ ] to annoy/disgust

[edit] Grammatical tone

It regularly occurs that two otherwise similar sounding phrases may have two very different meanings mainly due to a difference in tone of one or more words or concords.

Ke ngwana wa hao^‡ [ _ _ ¯ ¯ ¯ _ ] I am your child

Ke ngwana wa hao^‡ [ ¯ _ ¯ ¯ ¯ _ ] He/she/it is your child

O mobe^‡ [ _ _ ¯ ] You are ugly

O mobe^‡ [ ¯ _ ¯ ] He/she is ugly

Ke batlana le bona^‡ [ _ _ _ _ ¯ _ _ ] I am looking for them (present indicative mood)

Ke batlana le bona^‡ [ ¯ ¯ _ _ ¯ _ _ ] As I was looking for them (participial sub-mood i.e. this is not a complete sentence but part of a longer sentence)

Note that when grammatical tone is used the tone of the significant word influences the relative pitch of the rest of the phrase, although the tones of other words tend to remain intact.

[edit] Stress

Word stress in Sesotho (often called "penultimate lengthening" instead, though there are certain situations where it doesn't fall on the penultimate syllable) is very simple. Each complete Sesotho word has exactly one main stressed syllable.

Except for the second form of the first demonstrative pronoun, certain formations involving certain enclitics, polysyllabic ideophones, and a handful of other words, there is only one main stress falling on the penult.

The stressed syllable is slightly longer, often with a slightly higher pitch (though the actual tone is governed by other factors). Unlike in English, stress does not affect vowel quality or height.

The first demonstrative pronoun has the stress on the final syllable. Some proclitics can leave the stress of the original word in place, causing the resultant word to have the stress at the antepenultimate syllable (or even earlier, if the enclitics are compounded). Ideophones, which tend to not obey the phonetic laws which the rest of the language abides by, also have irregular stress.

Because the stress falls on the penultimate syllable, Sesotho tends to avoid monosyllabic words and often employs certain prefixes and suffixes to make the word disyllabic (such as the syllabic nasal in front of class 9 nouns with monosyllabic stems, etc).

[edit] Formatives

Bantu languages are agglutinative — words are constructed by combining discrete formatives (or "morphemes") according to specific rules, and sentences are constructed by stringing together words according to somewhat less strict rules. Formatives alone cannot constitute words. A study of the formatives is a study of the component parts of words.

These formatives may be divided generally into roots, stems, prefixes, concords, suffixes, verbal auxiliaries, enclitics, and enclitics.

[edit] Roots

Roots are the most basic irreducible elements of words and are immutable (except under purely phonetic changes). Entire words are built around roots by affixing other formatives; each word (except with contractions and compounds) contains exactly one formative, from which it derives its most basic meaning. Roots are the basis of parts of speech.

The following words:

1. ho ruta to teach
2. ba le rutile they taught y'all
3. re a rutana we teach one another
4. ha ba le rutisise they do not teach y'all properly/intensely
5. morutehi an academic
6. thuto education
7. moithuti learner (lit. "one who teaches herself")

are all formed from the root -rut-.

Although in some cases various phonetic processes may ultimately change the root's form in predictable ways (such as the nasalization in the last two examples) the root itself stays exactly the same.

There can be no doubt that words never emerged simply as roots. The root is a dead thing — the study of roots is primarily to aid the compilation of dictionaries, to further the study of comparative Bantu linguistics, and to help trace the evolution and connections of different languages. Many roots are shared by a wide range of Bantu languages.^[5]

Some further examples of roots:

• -tho (Ur-Bantu *-ntu) ⇒ motho person (especially a member of a Bantu language speaking culture)
• -itsi (Ur-Bantu *-iɣî) ⇒ metsi water
• -rwa (Ur-Bantu *-twa) ⇒ morwa a Khoisan person, Borwa South(ern)
• -tsheh- (Ur-Bantu *-kjek-) ⇒ ho tsheha to laugh
• -j- (Ur-Bantu *-ly-) ⇒ ho ja to eat, dijo food
• -holo (Ur-Bantu *-kulu) ⇒ -holo large, boholo size
• -rithi ⇒ morithi shade/shadow, serithi shadow of a human being (also their spirit, which becomes one of the ancestors when they die, or dignity/reputation; this is a very important concept in African Traditional Religion)
• -kgadi (Ur-Bantu *-ŋkalî) ⇒ rakgadi elder aunt — an important matriarchal figure in African Traditional Religion
• -re (Ur-Bantu *-ti) ⇒ ho re to say
• -dimo ⇒ Modimo God (traditionally never used in the plural), badimo ancestors (does not exist in the singular), ledimo cannibal
• -simo ⇒ tshimo field
• -edi (Ur-Bantu *-elî) ⇒ ngwedi moonlight
• -tja (Ur-Bantu *-βwa) ⇒ ntja dog
• -hlano (Ur-Bantu *-tjano) ⇒ -hlano five
• -rem- ⇒ ho rema to cut/chop down a tree

[edit] Stems

The distinction between roots and stems is fairly arbitrary. Though all roots are also stems, verbal stems often include suffixes, which roots never include. Additionally, the ending -a is included in the verb stem but not in the root (if it was truly part of the core root then it wouldn't be replaced in verb derivations and conjugations).

For example, from the verb root -bon- one may derive the following stems:

1. -bona ⇒ ho bona to see
2. -bontsha ⇒ ho bontsha to show
3. -bontsho ⇒ pontsho proof
4. -bonahala ⇒ ho bonahala to be visible

and these may all be listed under the same headword in a dictionary.

[edit] Prefixes

Prefixes are affixes attached to the beginning of words. These are distinct from concords, since changing the prefix of a word (such as the class prefix of a noun stem) may radically alter its meaning, while changing the concord attached to a stem does not change that stem's meaning.

Ke lenaneo It is a programme

[edit] Concords

Concords are similar to prefixes in that they appear at the beginning of words. Verbs and qualificatives used to describe a noun are brought into agreement with that noun by using the appropriate concords.

There are seven basic types of concords in Sesotho. In addition, there are two immutable prefixes used with verbs which are akin in function with concords.

Ba tlo e ja They shall eat it

[edit] Suffixes

Suffixes appear at the end of a word. There are numerous suffixes in Sesotho serving varied functions. For example, verbs may be derived from other verbs through the employment of several verbal suffixes. Diminutives, augmentatives, and locatives may all be derived from nouns through the use of several suffixes.

Strictly speaking the final vowel -a in verb stems is a suffix, as it is often regularly replaced by other vowels in the derivation and inflexion of verbs and nouns.

Re a tsebana We know each other

[edit] Verbal auxiliaries

Verbal auxiliaries are not to be confused with auxiliary or deficient verbs. They may appear as prefixes or as "infixes."^[6]

These include prefixes such as ha- used to negate verbs, and infixes such as -ka- used to form potential tenses.

The infix -a- used to form the past subjunctive (not to be confused with the infix -a- used to form the present indicative positive and the perfect indicative negative) merges with the subjectival concord resulting in what is often termed the "auxiliary concord."

Ke a tla I am coming

Ha ke no tla I shall not come

[edit] Enclitics

Enclitics (leaning-on words) are usually suffixed to verbs and convey a definite meaning. They were probably once separate words.

They may be divided into two categories: those which draw forward the stress (as normal suffixes), and those which don't alter the word's stress. The second type may result in words which don't have the stress on the penult (as is usual with Sesotho words).

Ha a sa le yo He is no longer there (stress on the penult)

Thola bo! Please keep quiet! (stress on the antepenultimate syllable)

[edit] Proclitics

There is only one proclitic in Sesotho. le- is normally prefixed to nouns as a conjunction, to convey the same meaning as English "and" when used between substantives. Many Indo-European languages have a post-clitic with a similar meaning (for example Latin -que and Sanskrit च -ca).

It may also be used to express the idea of "together with" and "even."

Ntate le mme My mother and father

Ke kopane le yena I met with her

Le bona ha ba kgolwe Even they do not believe

[edit] The Sesotho word

The Sesotho language is spoken conjunctively yet written disjunctively.^[7] In the following discussion, the natural conjunctive word division will be indicated by joining the disjunctive elements with the symbol • in the Sesotho and the English translation.

Batho ba•lelapa la•hae ba•a•mo•ahlola The•people of•the•family of•his they•judge•him (His family members judge him)

Certain observations about the Sesotho word (and those of other Bantu languages in general) may be made:

1. Each word has one part of speech, which usually appears at the end of the word, unless suffixed by enclitics. Not counting compounds and contractions, the word begins with zero or more proclitics, infixes,^[6] and prefixes, followed by a stem, followed by zero or more suffixes and enclitics. For example, in the word Ke•a•le•dumedisa (I•greet•y'all) the stem is the verb stem -dumel(a) (agree) surrounded by the subjectival concord ke- (first person singular), the present definite positive indicative infix marker -a-, the objectival concord -le- (third person plural), and the verb suffix -isa (causative, but in this case it gives the idiomatic meaning of "greet"). The phonological interactions can be quite complex:

   O•a•mpontsha (He•shows•me) subject concord o- + marker -a- + objectival concord -[N]- + verb stem -bon(a) (see) + causative suffix -isa

   Here the formatives are distorted by two instances of nasalization.
2. Each word has one main stressed syllable. No matter how many prefixes, suffixes, enclitics, and proclitics are appended to the word stem the complete word only has one main stressed syllable. This stress is most prominent on the final word in the sentence.
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   Ha•re•a•kgona ho•mo•eletsa hobane o•ne a•le manganga^‡ (We•failed to•advise•him because he•PAST he•COPULATIVE stubborn "he was stubborn")

   Re•tla•ya ha o•tjho^‡ (We•shall•go if you•say.so)

   Note the monosyllabic conjunctive ha.

Note that, unlike the Nguni languages, Sesotho does not have rules against juxtaposing strings of vowels:

Ha•a•a•apara^‡ (He•is•not•dressed) although the sequence -a•a- (class 1 negative subjectival concord followed by present definite positive indicative marker) is usually pronounced as a long a with a high falling tone, or simply as a short high tone a.

Certain situations may make the word division complex. This can happen with contractions (especially with deficient verb constructions), and in some complex verb conjugations. In all these situations, however, each proper word has exactly one main stressed syllable.

[edit] Parts of speech

There are basically twelve parts of speech in Sesotho.

As a rule, Bantu languages do not have any prepositions or articles. In Sesotho, locatives are inflected substantives and verb imperatives are treated as interjectives. The division of the four qualificatives is dependent solely on the concords that they use.

[edit] Nouns

Bantu languages are often said to have sentences which are "centred around the noun" due to the striking nature of the noun concordance system.

[edit] Structure

Except for class 1a (which has a "null prefix"), nouns are composed of a noun prefix and a stem (which may in turn be derived from other parts of speech; see below under Derivation). Each noun belongs to one of several noun classes and the knowledge of noun classes and their concords is pivotal to composing coherent sentences.

Usually the noun's class can be discerned by simply looking for the prefix, but there are many instances where this can become very complicated:

1. The syllabic nasal prefix of class 9 is more often than not invisible

2. Classes 1, 3, and 18 have similar prefixes but differing concords

3. Classes 2a and 14 have similar looking prefixes, differing in the vowel's quality and tone

4. Classes 15 and 17 have similar looking prefixes, differing only in tone

5. Many class 1 and 3 nouns have stems beginning with vowels, often causing the m to velarize to ng

   mo + -ana ⇒ ngwana child, cf Kiswahili mwana

6. Similarly, many class 14 nouns with stems beginning with vowels cause the prefix to palatalize to j

   bo + -ang ⇒ jwang grass

7. Often if the stem of a class 1 or 3 noun is derived from a verb beginning with b the b is absorbed by the m to become mm

   -busa govern ⇒ mmuso government

There are further complications caused by stems that begin with vowels when the vowels interact causing the quality and tone of the prefix vowel to change (this never happens if the stem comes from a vowel verb); in these cases it is often simply a matter of memorizing the correct class and plural for each individual word.

Noun stems can range in length from monosyllabic as in motho (person), to very long stems formed either by duplication (eg kgodumodumo great and fearsomething, the swallowing monster) or derived from long and complex verbs (eg the 7 syllable phuparollelano the act of mutual giving and receiving, derived from a verb which is in turn idiomatically and recursively — through 5 distinct steps — derived from the ideophone fupa of closing ones hand suddenly).

[edit] Noun prefix system

Sesotho, like all other Bantu languages, uses a set of "noun classes" and each noun belongs to one of the classes.

Nouns are divided somewhat arbitrarily between these classes, although a few of them contain nouns which mostly fall into clear categories. For example, most class 1 nouns are humans and verbal agents, most class 1a nouns are proper names and kinship terms etc.

The noun classes and their respective prefixes are as follows:

The Sesotho noun prefix system

Class	Prefix	Example(s)	English meaning(s)	Notes
1.	mo-	motho	person	mostly human nouns
2.	ba-	batho	people
1a.	-	ntate	father	mostly human nouns including nouns of kinship. The bo- is high tone
2a.	bo-	bontate	fathers
3.	mo-	monwana	finger	mostly non-human nouns
4.	me-	menwana	fingers
5.	le-	letsatsi	day/sun	both human and non-human
		leleme	tongue
6.	ma-	matsatsi	days
		maleme	tongues
	di[N]-	diteme	flattery
7.	se-	sephiri	secret	human and non-human
8.	di-	diphiri	secrets
9.	[N]-	ntho	thing	human and non-human
		thapelo	prayer
10.	di[N]-	dintho	things
		dithapelo	prayers
14.	bo-	bohobe	bread	abstract nouns belong here, therefore most class 14 words have no plural
		bobe	ugliness
14. (pl.)	ma-	mahobe	breads
15.	ho-	ho tsamaya	to go	infinitives belong here
16.	fa-	fatshe	down	this is the only word in this class
17.	ho-	hole	far away	the ho- is high tone
		hosane	tomorrow
18.	mo-	moraho	behind
		mose	overseas

Noun Classes 11, 12, 13, 19, 20, and 21 do not occur in Sesotho, but do occur in other Bantu languages (isiZulu has Class 11, Silozi has Classes 11, 12, and 13, etc).

Each basic noun in Sesotho has an inherent prefix (even if that prefix is a null prefix: segmentally empty). If you can remember a word off by heart, and you know the full list of prefixes, you can (perhaps 90% of the time) determine the class of that particular word. Knowing the class, first, allows one to know what the plural of the word is (for singular words), e.g:

sefate (tree) has prefix se-, which is of Class 7, therefore its plural must be difate

Up until Class 10, the plural class for Class n is Class n + 1 (where n is odd). Another example:

lemati (door) has prefix le-, which is Class 5, so its plural is mamati.

Problems start occurring with words like monyako (door) — is it in Class 3 or 1?

You will observe in the above table that the note next to group 1 says "mostly humans" and that group 3 says "mostly non-humans." Since doors are not human, we can therefore conclude that monyako is probably in Class 3, so its plural is in Class 4, menyako.

Motsoalle (friend), in Class 1, has an irregular plural in Class 4 — metsoalle. Also, morena (king), has a plural in Class 6. Many Class 1 words have a tendency of misbehaving, but we know that they belong to Class 1 because of their concords. Quite a substantial number of Class 1 words have their plurals in Class 6.

Often, when the prefix of a noun whose stem begins with a vowel (and is not derived from a vowel verb stem) is obscured by various phonological processes, prefix compounding may occur (instead of the usual prefix substitution) when forming plurals, or even in the singular itself. Some words may even end up in a different class

jwang grass in class 14 is often heard as bojwang and has plural majwang, both instances of prefix compounding since the jwa- is the palatalized class 14 prefix bo-.

ngwetsi was originally a class 1 word, whose prefix is velarized and is now treated as a class 9 noun with plural dingwetsi. In Setswana, however, it is still treated as a class 1 noun with plural betsi

In idiomatic speech, the le- of class 5, the se- of class 7, and the di- of class 10 are sometimes not rendered when the noun is followed by the appropriate concords.^[8] Some historical words, such as letsie (locust), have completely lost their singular prefixes (and, with tsie, ended up in class 9). Others, such as lelapa (family, home) are often rendered without the prefix even when not followed by any prefixes ("at the home" is always lapeng). The class 5 noun isao (next year) has completely its prefix, and has plural maisao.

Notes:

1. [N] means that nasalization will occur to the following consonant.
2. Many Class 5 words in Sesotho come from the original Bantu *lu- class 11, whose plural has been argued by Meinhof (in his hypothetical Ur-Bantu) to be *lî- (an augment to Class 10), which is why some Class 5 nouns may have two distinct plurals: one in Class 6, and one in Class 10. However, the di[N]- plural does not apply to all Class 5 words, and when it does the meaning might be changed slightly (maleme tongues, diteme flattery). For example, Setswana uses lorato for Sesotho lerato (love), as this class still exists in the language. When in doubt, do not use the di[N]- form.
3. Classes 16, 17, and 18 are the locative classes. They are no longer productive in Sesotho (they cannot accept new nouns) but they are productive in many other Bantu languages.

[edit] Tones

Except for classes 2a and 17, the prefixes are low toned, while the set of possible tone patterns for the stem is large and obviously dependent on its length.

When certain formatives are prefixed to a noun with a low tone for the first syllable of the stem, the prefix is raised to a high tone. With monosyllabic stems the tone of the stem is raised as well.

morena [ _ _ _ ] king ⇒ wa morena [ ¯ ¯ _ _ ] of (class 1 or 3 possessive concord) the king, le morena [ ¯ ¯ _ _ ] and the king

motse [ _ _ ] village ⇒ ho motse [ ¯ ¯ ¯ ] to the village

[edit] Derivation

In the Bantu languages, nouns form an open class with new nouns regularly and actively created from nouns and other parts of speech through predictable methods.

[edit] From nouns

Many nouns can be derived from other nouns usually through the use of suffixes.

• Abstract nouns can be created by substituting bo- for the prefix:

mosadi woman ⇒ bosadi femininity

• Proper names based on nouns belong to class 1a, no matter what the original class was
• Often parents assume the names of their children by prefixing the name with Ra- (for the father; note the Setswana Rra- and the Setswana noun rre father) or Mma- (for the mother; this is more often than not simply shortened to Ma-). Also, a married woman may assume a name based on the Mma- prefix and her husbands praise name/surname.
• Most nouns can form new nouns with the diminutive suffixes -ana (sometimes -ane), -anyane, and -nyana. Often stems ending in the high vowels undergo various phonetic changes (palatalization, alveolarization, and velarization) due to the initial vowel in the suffixes:

thebe shield ⇒ thejane small shield

• The suffix -hadi is often used to create the feminine of some nouns and the augmentative of some other others:

kgosi king ⇒ kgosihadi queen

• Sometimes the last 2 syllables of a noun may be repeated to indicate quantity, irregularity, or repetition:

dikgomo cows ⇒ dikgomo-kgomo herds of cattle

[edit] From qualificatives

Qualificatives can be used to derive abstract nouns in class 14 by prefixing bo-.

Adjective -ngata many ⇒ bongata quantity

Relative -thata hard ⇒ bothata difficulty

Enumerative -sele other ⇒ bosele difference

[edit] From ideophones

Some nouns are irregularly (and often idiomatically) derived from ideophones by reduplication:

metle of striking ⇒ semetle-metle big news

[edit] From verbs

Nouns of most classes are very actively and regularly derived from verbs. What follows is only a brief and incomplete overview.

-rata love, desire ⇒

1. morati (and class 2 plural) lover
5. lerato (and class 6 plural) love
7. serati (and class 7 plural) lover
9. thato (and class 10 plural) desire, will
14. borati state of one who loves
15. ho rata to love, desire; loving, desiring

Note that:

• The noun stem, with a few idiomatic exceptions, fossilizes the tone pattern of the infinitive of the verb (in this example it is [ ¯ _ ], giving [ _ ¯ _ ] for the complete noun including the prefix)
• Infinitives are strictly class 15 nouns derived from verb stems, although they may also be used as abstract nouns
• Class 14 nouns are almost always derived from other nouns, not from the verb directly
• With personal nouns, the difference between classes 1 and 7 is often that the class 7 agent performs the action habitually or with proficiency:

-kganna drive ⇒ mokganni driver and sekganni professional driver

Generally, agents are formed in classes 1 and 7 by adding the prefix and changing the final vowel to i, while impersonal nouns are formed in several classes by adding the prefix and changing the final vowel to o:

-rua become rich, own livestock ⇒ morui rich person, moruo wealth

Agents derived from passive verbs retain the final -uwa:

-rata love ⇒ -ratuwa/-ratwa be loved ⇒ moratuwa beloved

[edit] Compound nouns

A rich source of nouns is compounds formed (somewhat irregularly) from other parts of speech and even complete sentences. Note that the use of dashes to separate their parts is also irregular and usually based on the popularity and utility of the noun, and the Lesotho and South African orthographies tend to differ (with the Lesotho orthography tending to prefer dashes more).

moloa law (itself derived from the extinct root of the verb -laola rule) + motheo foundation (derived from the verb -thea establish) ⇒ molao wa motheo founding law ⇒ molaotheo constitution

bohlanya ba pere horse madness ⇒ bohlanya-ba-pere Aristida Burkei grass

ho ja ditlhapi to eat fish (traditionally considered taboo) ⇒ Mojatlhapi English person (derisive)

ho dula setulo to sit in a chair ⇒ modulasetulo chairperson

ho ya le moya to be carried by the wind ⇒ seyalemoya radio receiver

ke a tseba I know ⇒ class 2a bokeatseba doctors

[edit] Foreign (non-Bantu or Khoisan) acquisitions

Many Sesotho nouns (and other parts of speech) stem from contact with speakers of Indo-European languages, primarily French missionaries, Orange Free State Afrikaners, and, in modern times, English people. The very alien phonetics and phonologies of these languages mean that words are to be imported rather irregularly with varying phonetic transformations.

English "heathen" ⇒ mohetene

Afrikaans "Boer" ⇒ Leburu Afrikaner

English "teacher" ⇒ titjhere male teacher (note that the English "silent r" is rendered)

Afrikaans "venster" window (cf Latin fenestra) ⇒ festere (note the consonant cluster)

English "speaker" ⇒ spikara loudspeaker (with plural dipikara as if the cluster "sp" was a contraction of sep-)

[edit] Pronouns

There are four main types of pronouns in Sesotho: absolute, demonstrative, quantitive, and qualificative. Each pronoun is a complete word and may stand in place of the noun or right next to it (for emphasis).

Concords are NOT pronouns. Concords are usually mandatory in certain places while pronouns are often not. Pronouns cannot be used in place of concords.

[edit] Absolute pronouns

These merely stand in place of nouns and say nothing else about them. They are formed from the pronomial concord of the noun (Doke & Mofokeng claims that the pronomial concord is actually derived from the absolute pronoun) plus the suffix -na.

The tone pattern is [ _ ¯ ].

Wena o batla eng? You, what do you want?

When a verb has two subjects, the second subject cannot be indicated by a concord:

Ke ba₂ bontshitse yona₂ I showed it₁ to them₂.

[edit] Demonstrative pronouns

Sesotho has three positional types of pronouns (1 less than many other Bantu languages) each in two forms. Note that any affixes atached to the pronoun do not change its form.^[9]

• The first demonstrative signifies "this" indicating proximity to the speaker. The first form has tone pattern [ _ ¯ ] and is formed by suffixing the relative concord with the vowel in the class prefix (the exception being class 1(a) using eo, due to its irregular concords, and class 9 uses ee). This pronoun is not very commonly used.

  Dintja tsee These dogs

  The second form has tone pattern [ ¯ ¯ ] and is formed by suffixing -na to the relative concord (the exception being class 1(a) enwa). These words have an irregular stress which falls on the final syllable.

  Batho bana These people

• The second demonstrative signifies "that" indicating relative distance from the speaker. The first form has tone pattern [ ¯ _ ] and suffixes -o to the relative concord.

  Sefofane seo That airplane.

  The second form has tone pattern [ ¯ ¯ ] and suffixes -no to the relative concord.

  Morero ono That purpose

• The third demonstrative signifies "that yonder" indicating distance from both parties. The first form has tone pattern [ ¯ ¯ ] and is formed by suffixing -ane to the relative concord. In this case the a interacts strongly with the vowel in the concord.

  Koloi yane That car there

  Setshwantsho sane That picture there

  The second form has tone pattern [ ¯ _ ] and is formed somewhat irregularly from the relative concord. The suffix is -la which changes to -le if the concord ends with an a. Class 1(a) has an irregular pronoun with elwa.

  Naledi ela That star there

[edit] Quantitative pronouns

While many other Bantu languages have several quantitative pronouns, Sesotho only has the -hle ("all"/"whole") form. It has tone pattern [ ¯ ¯ ] and is formed from the pronomial concord for nouns.

Letsatsi lohle The whole day

[edit] Qualificative pronouns

Qualificative pronouns are qualificatives used substantivally in a sentence.

Dikoloi tse ntle The beautiful cars ⇒ Tse ntle di fihlile The beautiful ones (cars) have arrived

[edit] Adjectives

Adjectives are qualificatives used with the adjectival concords.

In the Bantu languages, the adjectives form a closed class (with some languages having no proper adjectives at all). Sesotho has a rather large number of adjectives due to the included colour adjectives. It has about 50 adjectives which can be divided into two categories:

• Common adjectives are miscellaneous in nature and number about 20. The numbers 2 to 5 belong to this category.

  Example common adjectives

  Stem	English meaning(s)
  -be	ugly, bad
  -holo	big
  -ng	some, other
  -bedi	two
  -lelele, -telele	tall, long
  -tshehadi	female, left hand side
  -nyane, -nyenyane	small, few
  -tle	beautiful, proper
  -kae?	how many/much?
  -ngata	many

  The adjective -holo (Ur-Bantu *-kulu) is very ancient and exists in almost every Bantu language (sometimes as a relative).

• Colour adjectives are a bit more numerous and indicate basic colours and animal colour patterns. These are responsible for the unusually large number of adjectives in Sesotho, since most other Bantu languages have the colours as relatives instead.

  Example colour adjectives

  Stem	English meaning(s)
  -sweu'	white
  -fubedu, -kgubedu	red
  -phifadi	white with long black stripes
  -thokwa	fawn
  -tala	green, blue
  -sootho	brown
  -rolo	black with white spots (goats only)
  -tseka	with white spot on the forehead
  -tjhaba	red and white
  -tshumu	white faced

  Notes:

  • The adjective -tala means "green/blue", while the relative -tala (pronounced exactly the same) means "raw/unripe." The two meanings are obviously related.

  mokopu o motala a green pumpkin, mokopu o tala a raw pumpkin

  • The s of the adjective -sootho and the r of the adjective -rolo are never nasalized with class 6 (di[N]-), 8, 9, and 10 nouns.
  • Adjectives beginning with hl do not undergo nasalization either.
  • -fubedu is nasalized irregularly to -kgubedu,^[10] though it is very common to hear just the nasalized form used with all nouns.
  • The adjective -ng is not to be confused with the enumerative -ng (one) which has a different tone. Like the enumerative, it is also irregular. It appears nasalised as -nngwe with class 9 (it is simply -ng for all other classes). Also, for the di-/di[N]- classes it uses the irregular (though normal in Setswana) concord tse di[N]- instead of tse [N]-.

  dipudi tse ding some goats

  dipudi tse ngata many goats, Setswana dipudi tse dingata

[edit] Relatives

Adjectives are qualificatives used with the relative concords.

In the Bantu languages, the relatives form an open class and are the primary qualificatives used. Relative clauses are also used with the relative concords.

There are two types of relative stems:

1. Stems which seem to be radical in nature, and from which abstract nouns in class 14 may be formed.
2. Certain nouns unchanged in form.

Examples of both types follow below:

Example relatives

Type	Example	English meaning(s)
Radical	-hlaha	wild
	-kgopo	wicked
	-thata	difficult, hard
	-tala	raw, unripe
	-batsi	wide
Nouns	-metsi	wet (water)
	-molemo	worthwhile (worth)
	-sebete	brave (liver)
	-bohlale	intelligent (intelligence)
	-boima	difficult, heavy (heaviness)

The relative -tala is not to be confused with the adjective -tala.

Verbs can be used in very short relative clauses, although these are not considered proper relative stems:

ho tsofala to age ⇒ monna ya tsofetseng an old man

[edit] Enumeratives

In the Bantu languages, enumeratives are a category of qualificatives generally having some significance of enumeration. They are distinguished from other qualificatives by the fact that they use the enumerative concord.

In many Bantu languages the first five numerals belong to this category, but in Sesotho only the numeral 1 is an enumerative (the second to fifth are adjectives).

Sesotho has three basic enumeratives, divided into two types ("weak" or "strong"):

The enumeratives

No.	Stem	Type	English meaning
1.	-ng [ _ ]	strong	one, alone
	-ng [ ¯ ]		what kind?
2.	-fe? [ ¯ ]	weak	which?
	-feng? [ ¯ ¯ ]
3.	-sele [ ¯ _ ]	weak	other

The strong enumerative stems use the strong form of the enumerative concord, and the weak stems use the weak form.

The numeral -ng has a special form with class 9 nouns where it appears as -nngwe (thus the numeral). It is always preceded by one of two constructions:

• The participial

mooki a le mong one nurse

baoki ba le bang the nurses only

• The relative

mooki ya mong one nurse

This stem should not be confused with the adjective -ng (some) which has a high tone and is used as a normal adjective:

mooki e mong some nurse

The other enumeratives are used regularly using the enumerative concord:

Ke moriana mong? What type of medicine is this?

Ke moriana ofe? Which medicine is this?

Ke moriana osele! It's the wrong medicine!

-fe may also be used in a particular construction (repeated and with the conjunctive enclitic le-) to mean "any":

selemo sefe le sefe any year

[edit] Possessives

Possessives are qualificatives used with the possessive concords.

• The direct possessive occurs when the concord agrees with the possessee, while the stem indicates the possessor. Pronomial possessive stems agree with the possessee. Sesotho has these only for the singulars of the first and second persons and class 1(a) (third person) nouns; the other nouns and persons used the full absolute pronouns to indicate possession.

  Possessive pronomial stems

  Person	Stem
  1st. person singular	-ka
  2nd. person singular	-hao
  3rd. person and class 1 nouns	-hae

  Eg:

  sefahleho sa ka my face

  sefahleho sa yona it's face (class 9)

  -eso (of my people), -eno (of your people), and -bo (of his/her people) indicate collective possession. The vowels in the stems coalesce with the vowel in the possessive concord, changing the vowel quality:

  dinku tseno your sheep

  Prefixing ha- to these stems gives -heso (of my family or community), -heno (of your family or community), and -habo (of his/her family or community). Coalescence occurs again:

  dinku tsa heno your family's sheep

• The possessive concord with nouns is used to directly indicate the possessor. The construction is possessee, concord + possessor. The concord may also be used with demonstrative and qualificative pronouns. Eg:

  leihlo la ngwana the child's eye

  ho rata ha ntate my father's love

  mongolo wa bana the handwriting of these (class 1(a))

• The descriptive possessive occurs when the concord agrees with the possessor of some descriptive quality, which cannot be prononomial. In this case the possessor, being a noun, is used to describe the possessee. This happens less commonly in Sesotho than in other Bantu languages (the relative use being prefered instead), but there are still numerous instances of its use:

  thipa ya tshepe an iron knife

  mokotla wa poone a sack of mealies

  monna wa sefofu a blind man (lit. "man of a blind person")

  selemo sa bone the fourth year

[edit] Numerals

Bantu languages use a quinary counting system with six basic numbers, the other four being miscellaneous.

Here is a comparison between the first ten cardinals in some Bantu languages:

Numerals in several Bantu languages

No.	Sesotho	Setswana	Kiswahili	isiZulu	Luganda
1.	nngwe	'ngwe	moja	ukunye	emu
2.	pedi	pedi	mbili	isibili	bbiri
3.	tharo	tharo	tatu	kuthathu	ssatu
4.	nne	nne	nne	okune	nnya
5.	hlano	tlhano	tano	isihlanu	ttaano
6.	tshelela	thataro	sita	isithupa	mukaaga
7.	supa	supa	baba	isikhombisa	musanvu
8.	robedi	robedi	nane	isishiyagalombili	munaana
9.	robong	robong	tisa	isishiyagalokunye	mwenda
10.	leshome	shome	kumi	ishume	kkumi

Notes:

• The six basic numbers are 1 to 5, and 10.
• As in many Bantu languages, numbers 2 to 5 are adjectives (in many others they are enumeratives); the number 10 is a relative. In Sesotho, all the other numbers are relatives derived from verbs (e.g. 7 is derived from "to point").
• The above are the cardinal (counting) forms, derived from the adjectival forms (for 2 to 5); in particular, the forms in the Sotho-Tswana languages are nasally permuted.
• In Sesotho, nngwe is a variant (allomorph) of the adjective stem -ng used only for Class 9 nouns. The use of the number "one" in Sesotho is different from the other Sotho-Tswana languages, because the Sesotho -ng is an irregular enumerative which behaves sometimes like an adjective and can therefore become a noun.

[edit] Verbs

Verbs are words which signify the action or state of a substantive, and are brought into agreement with it using the subjectival concord. This definition excludes imperatives and infinitives, which are respectively interjectives and class 14 nouns.

[edit] Varieties

Verb stems may be divided into four varieties:

1. Regular disyllabic stems beginning with a consonant and ending in a vowel
2. Monosyllabic verbs
3. Vowel verb stems are disyllabic and begin with a vowel
4. Derived verbs constructed from other verbs, noun roots, adjectival roots, and ideophones by suffixes.

Regular verbs are those beginning with a consonant and ending in the vowel a. The final a may change into every vowel except the near-close near-back vowel (/ʊ/) through inflexion or derivation. The verb root is the atomic part of the verb which does not change (save for some purely phonetic changes) and many Bantu languages share similar verb roots (with predictable sound changes between languages). Most non-monosyllabic verbs have one principal part, while the regular monosyllabic verbs can be defined with two principal parts (the infinitive and the passive).

Stem -bona see, from root -bon-, also existing as isiZulu -bon-, Kiswahili -on-, Tshivenda -vhon-, Chishona -von-, Chilamba -won- etc. Ur-Bantu *-βon-

Monosyllabic stems may be classified into several categories:

• The i-stems have a typical i in derivatives, and u in the passive

-tla come ⇒ Perfect -tlile, Causative -tlisa, Passive -tluwa

-ya go ⇒ Perfect -ile, Causative -isa, Passive -uwa

-kga draw water ⇒ Perfect -kgile, Causative -kgisa, Passive -kguwa

• The e-stems have a typical near-close near-front e in their derivatives

-tjha burn ⇒ Perfect -tjhele, Causative -tjhesa, Passive -tjhewa

-ja eat ⇒ Perfect -jele, Causative -jesa, Passive -jewa'

• The "velar" e-stems are labialized with a bilabial approximant w in the onset, and have similar forms to other e-stems but have a near-close near-back vowel o in the passive

-nwa drink ⇒ Perfect -nwele, Causative -nwesa, Passive (h|nʊwɑ|-nowa}

• There are three defective stems, ending in a vowel other than a

-re say ⇒ Perfect -itse, No causative, Passive -thwe

-le be; very restricted in use (only used in certain copulatives)

-tjho say so ⇒ Perfect -tjhelo/-tjholo, No causative, No passive

Vowel verb stems are conjugated as regular verbs but are put into a separate class due to being uncommon in Bantu languages (and, in some languages but not in Sesotho, causing changes to concords and other formatives prefixed to them). Class 1 and 5 nouns derived from these verbs do not cause any velarization to the prefix. These verbs may have originally began with the Ur-Bantu voiced velar fricative *ɣ.

-etsa do

-eta travel

-utlwa hear

-aha construct

[edit] Tones

Verbs fall into two categories: H verbs and L verbs. The difference lies in the "underlying tone" of the verb's first syllable (or the verb's "basic tone") being either high or low (alternatively null in some theories of Bantu tone). When used as an infinitive at the end of a question sentence not employing the interrogative adverb na?, or in the future indicative tense, the resulting class 15 noun is monotonous (all syllable high toned or all low toned) with the underlying tone of the first syllable spread to all the syllables.

Nouns derived from the verb are fossilised with the tones of the simple class 15 infinitive as appears in medial positions without a subject or object. The rules for creating this tonal pattern are intricate and involve high tone spread (the high tone of an H verb's first syllable spreads to the second syllable), the finality restriction (the last syllable may not have a high tone), and the OCP effect among other factors.

These and other factors may also apply in normal verbal conjugations. Adding a verbal suffix (through derivation, not inflexion) creates a new verb which falls in the same tone category as the original, and is subject to the same rules.

-kopana (L verb) meet ⇒ ho kopantsha [ _ _ _ _ _ ] cause to meet ⇒ ho kopantshuwa [ _ _ _ _ _ _ ] be caused to meet, etc.

-ahlola (H verb) judge ⇒ ho ahlola [ _ ¯ ¯ _ ] to judge kahlolo [ ¯ ¯ _ ] judgement, moahlodi [ _ ¯ ¯ _ ] judge, boahlodi [ _ ¯ ¯ _ ] state of being a judge

The tones of the noun prefixes of nouns derived from verbs are independent of the tones of the stem.

Some nouns derived from verbs have idiomatic tonal patterns independent of the original verb's tones.

-loka (L verb) be sufficient ⇒ -lokela be sufficient for ⇒ tokelo human right (irregular tone [ _ ¯ _ ] instead of the expected [ _ _ _ ])

According to some tonal theories, several "tonal melodies" may be assigned to certain verbal conjugations based on the desired grammatical tense, grammatical aspect, and grammatical mood (for example, with many verb conjugations the only difference between the indicative mood and the participial sub-mood is one of tone). These are applied before most other rules and may be indicated by a code including the symbols H (high tone), L (low tone), B (verb's basic tone), and * (iteratively applying the preceding tone).

For example, applying the "Subjunctive Melody" (HL*H) to the H verb -bona (see) and the L verb -sheba (look for/at) results in both Ke shebe tau (So I may look at the lion) and Ke bone tau (So I may see the lion) being pronounced with the exact same tone pattern [ ¯ ¯ ¯ _ ¯ ].

[edit] Verbal derivatives

Various derivatives may (recursively) be formed from verbs by means of several suffixes. Each derived verb is as much an authentic verb as the original.

In the following sections, "polysyllabic" generally means "of more than two syllables."

Verbs are derived primarily through suffixes, some of which are no longer active ("dead").

Verb derivations using the root -qet- finish

Type	Suffix	Valency change	Example	Meaning
Simple	-a	0	-qeta	finish
Passive	-wa	–1	-qetwa	be finished
	-uwa		-qetuwa
Neuter	-ahala	–1	-qetahala	finishable
	-eha		-qeteha
Applied	-ela	+1	-qetela	finished for
Causative	-isa	+1	-qetisa	cause to finish
Intensive	-isisa	0	-qetisisa	finish intensely
Perfective	-ella	0	-qetella	finish completely
Reciprocal	-ana	–1	-qetana	finish each other
Associative	-ahana	–1	-qetahana	(be finished together)
Reversive	-olla	0	-qetolla	unfinish
Augmentative	-olla	0	-qetolla	(finish extensively)
Extensive	-aka	0	-qetaka	(finish repeatedly and extensively)
Diminutive	(see text)	0	-qeta-qeta	finish a litle
Stative 1 (dead)	-ama	–1	-qetama	(in a state of finishing)
Stative 2 (dead)	-ala	–1	-qetala	(in a state of finishing)
Contactive (dead)	-ara	0	-qetara	(finish while touching?)

• The passive indicates that the subject is acted upon by the agent, just like the "passive voice" in English. The agent is indicated by the copulative prefix ke- although passives may also be used idiomatically without an agent. The suffix may be either -wa (short passive) or -uwa (long passive). The following rules are applied to form the passive:
  • The long passive is formed simply by changing the final -a to -uwa

  -bopa mould ⇒ -bopuwa moulded

  • Many verbs accept the short passive suffix without change

  -bitsa call ⇒ -bitswa called

  • Palatalization occurs where necessary (when p, ph, b, or f is followed by w)

  -hapa win ⇒ -hapjwa/-hatjwa won

  • Velarization occurs where necessary (when m or ny is followed by w)

  -tsitsinya move slightly ⇒ -tsitsinngwa moved slightly

  • Monosyllabic e-stems suffix -ewa (except the velar e-stems ending in -wa, which suffix -owa) and i-stems suffix -uwa

  -fa give ⇒ -fuwa given

  • Verbs ending in -ya only use -uwa

  -tsamaya walk ⇒ -tsamauwa walked (idiomatic)

  • Verbs ending in -ua replace it with -uuwa

  -bua speak ⇒ -buuwa spoken

  It is very rare to have other verbs derived from the passive through suffixes. This suffix has the effect of decreasing the valency of the verb.
• The neuter indicates an intransitive state without reference to the agent determining the condition. It can be approximated in English by the suffix "-able" or by using "become." It is distinct from the passive. The suffix is -eha, while some verbs can also take -ahala.

  -pheta accomplish ⇒ -phetahala finishable/take place

  -qhala disperse ⇒ -qhaleha spillable/become scattered

  This suffix has the effect of decreasing the valency of the verb.
• The applied indicates an action applied on behalf of or with regard to some object. It can be approximated in English by prepositions and prepositional phrases such as "for" and "towards." The suffix is -ela. The following rules apply when forming the applied:
  • Usually one simply suffixes -ela

  -batla to search for ⇒ -batlela search on behalf of

  • Verbs ending in -ya replace it with -ela

  -tsamaya walk ⇒ -tsamaela walk on behalf of, towards

  • Verbs ending in -la preceded by an open vowel (/ɛ/, /ɑ/, or /ɔ/) contract to -lla

  -ngola write ⇒ -ngolla write to/for

  • Verbs ending in -la preceded by a closed vowel (/i/, /ɪ/, /ʊ/, or /u/) don't contract

  -hola grow ⇒ -holela grow for/towards

  • Polysyllabic verbs ending in -sa, -tsa (most), -tswa, -ntsha, and -nya cause the -la to alveolarize to -tsa

  -tlatsa fill ⇒ -tlatsetsa fill up for

  • Polysyllabic causative verbs ending in -tsa replace it with -letsa, reversing an original alveolarization

  -sebetsa work ⇒ -sebeletsa work for

  The applied increases the valency of verbs; intransitive verbs may become transitive in the applied, and transitive verbs may become doubly transitive

  -phela live ⇒ -phelela live for

  -bolela say something ⇒ -bolella tell someone something (two objects)

• The causative indicates an action caused to happen by some agent. It can be approximated in English by using "cause to." The suffix is -isa The following rules apply when forming the causative:
  • Usually one simply suffixes -isa

  -utlwa hear ⇒ -utlwisa cause to hear

  • Verbs ending in -ya replace it with -isa

  -tsamaya walk ⇒ -tsamaisa cause to walk

  • Some verbs ending in a -tsa which is an alveolarization of an original -la revert the alveolarization, ending in -disa

  -sebetsa work ⇒ -sebedisa use

  • Monosyllabic e-stems suffix -esa and i-stems suffix -isa

  -nwa drink ⇒ -nwesa cause to drink

  • Verbs ending in -nya and disyllabic verbs ending in -na contract and cause nasalization resulting in -ntsha

  -bona see ⇒ -bontsha show

  • The original Ur-Bantu causative suffix *-ŷa causes some verbs ending in -la and -na to change to -tsa and -nya respectively

  -kopana meet ⇒ -kopanya join

  • Most verbs ending in -oha and -uha change the -ha to -sa. This is also due to the Ur-Bantu *-ŷa (Ur-Bantu *-ka + *-ŷa ⇒ *-kŷa, which appears as Sesotho -sa)

  -aloha go to graze ⇒ -alosa herd

  Often the causative verb has a meaning implying "help to do"

  -aha build ⇒ -ahisa help to build

  The causative may increase the valency of verbs

  -tseba know something ⇒ -tsebisa cause someone to know something

• The intensive indicates intensity or quickness of action. The suffix is -isisa and it therefore follows similar phonetic rules as the causative. Sometimes, the suffix -isa is used instead, resulting in causative and intensive verbs looking the same.
• The perfective indicates an action that has been carried out to completion or perfection. The suffix is -ella. It must therefore not be confused with the applied form of verbs ending in -ela. A further intensification of meaning is achieved with the suffixes -eletsa (-ela + Ur-Bantu *-ŷa) and -elletsa (-ella + Ur-Bantu *-ŷa), a compounding of intensive and perfective suffixes.
• The reciprocal denotes a reciprocated action. It is formed by suffixing -ana. It has the effect of decreasing the valency, but a direct subject may still be used if it is prefixed with the conjunctive enclitic le- (and, with); that is, they have a conjunctive import

  -bua speak ⇒ -buisa cause to speak ⇒ ba a buisana they communicate, ke buisana le yena I communicate with him

• The associative indicates that two or more subjects are associated together in the action of the verb. It is formed by suffixing -ahana. This derivative formation seems to be slowly dying out as it is not regularly used with most verbs.
• The reversive (or inversive) indicates an entire reversal of an action. It is formed by suffixing -olla although several other dead formations exist, showing two sets of derivations into intransitive, transitive, and causative.

  Dead reversive forms

  Type	Intransitive	Transitive	Causative
  Short	-oha	-ola	-osa
  Full	-oloha	-olla	-olosa

  
  

• The augmentative is a dead formation signifying an augmentation or extension of a verb. It is indicated by suffixes similar to the dead full formation of the reversive (-oloha, -olla, and -olosa).
• The extensive indicates performing the action repeatedly or extensively. It is formed with the suffix -aka but is limited in scope. It is primarily used with verbs signify discrete actions, causing them to be continuous or habitual.

  -qhoma jump ⇒ -qhomaka prance about

• The diminutive indicates an action done "a little." It is indicated by reduplication, the rules being determined by the length of the verb:
  • Disyllabic verbs repeat the entire stem

  -tseba know ⇒ -tseba-tseba know imperfectly

  • Monosyllabic verbs are repeated with the near-close near-front vowel (/ɪ/) between the stems

  -ja ⇒ -ja-e-ja

  • Polysyllabic verbs duplicate the first two syllables of the stem

  -fumana find ⇒ -fuma-fumana find somewhat

• The -ama stative is a dead formation found in a few verbs, all indicating a state or bodily position. It is indicated by the suffix -ama. The perfective of these verbs changes the -ama to -ame and indicates a continuous, current action instead of a completed one. Past tense may be indicated by multi-verbal conjugation.

  -paqama lie face downwards ⇒ O paqame He is lying face down, O ile a paqama He did assume a lying position, O ne a paqame He was lying

• The -ala stative is a dead formation found in a few verbs, all indicating a state or bodily position. It is indicated by the suffix -ala. The perfective of these verbs changes the -ala to -etse and indicates a continuous, current action instead of a completed one. Past tense may be indicated by multi-verbal conjugation.

  -makala wonder ⇒ Ba maketse They are in awe, Ba ile ba makala They did become amazed, Ba ne ba maketse They were amazed

• The contactive is a dead formation found in a few verbs, all indicating touch or contact of some sort. It is indicated by the suffix -ara. The perfective of these verbs changes the -ara to -ere and indicates a continuous, current action instead of a completed one. Past tense may be indicated by multi-verbal conjugation.

  -apara wear ⇒ Re apere We are clothed, Re ile ra apara We did become dressed, Re ne re apere We were dressed

[edit] Non-verbal derivatives

Verbs may also, to a lesser degree, be derived from nouns, qualificatives, and ideophones.

• Denominative verbs are derived from nouns and qualificatives. They are formed by suffixing -fa (dead) or -fala to the stem, giving a verb meaning "become...."

  bohlale intelligence ⇒ -hlalefa become intelligent

  -nolo soft (relative) ⇒ -nolofala become soft

  These are stative verbs. The monosyllabic adjectival roots (except -ng some, and -ne four) become nasalized before assuming the suffix. Furthermore, the vowel of -tle (beautiful) changes to -tla:

  -be ugly ⇒ -mpefala become ugly

  -tjha new ⇒ -ntjhafala become renewed

  -tle beautiful ⇒ -ntlafala become beatiful

  -tsho black ⇒ -ntshofala become black

  Causatives are formed regularly by changing the -fala suffix to -fatsa. Perfectives are formed regularly -fala suffix to -fetse.
• Deideophonic verbs are formed rather irregularly from disyllabic ideophones. They are miscellaneous in nature and are formed by the addition of several suffixes such as -ha, -la, -tsa, -sa, -ma, -tseha, -bala, -ka etc.

  pheto of turning over ⇒ -phetoha flip over, roll in a car accident

  tswete of being completely full ⇒ -tsweteha burst open

[edit] Inflexion during conjugation

In addition to the verbal derivatives, the following changes may occur to the stem's suffix -a, during conjugation:

• The -a changes to -e ([ɪ]) to form the perfect subjunctive tense and certain tenses of the negative conjugation. This vowel always causes the syllable carrying it to assume a high tone.
• The -a changes to -e ([ɛ]) to form the present-future tense of the subjunctive mood.
• The -a becomes -ang to form the plural of the imperative and certain relative tenses.
• The -a becomes -ile to form the perfect stem. Various phonological situations may change this basic construct.

The general rules for the formation of the perfect are varied due to various mostly phonological interactions with the suffix:

• Generally, -ile is suffixed

-reka buy ⇒ -rekile bought

• Verbs ending in -ya replace it with -ile

-tsamaya go ⇒ -tsamaile went

• For monosyllabic stems, i-stems suffix -ile and e-stems suffix -ele

-nwa drink ⇒ -nwele drank

• Disyllabic verbs ending in -ma change it to -mme

-roma send ⇒ -romme sent

• Polysyllabic verbs ending in -sa, -tsa (most), -tswa, and -ntsha cause the -ile to alveolarise to -itse

-hlatswa wash ⇒ -hlatswitse washed

• Polysyllabic applied or causative verbs ending in -tsa change the -tsa back to -la, resulting in -ditse

-makatsa amaze ⇒ -makaditse amazed

• Polysyllabic causative verbs ending in -nya changing it to -ntse, by alveolarization

-kenya cause to enter ⇒ -kentse caused to enter

• Verbs ending in -na of more than one syllable and disyllabic reciprocal verbs change the -na to -nne

-bina sing ⇒ -binne sang

and so forth...

For all verbs, however, the past tense may also be indicated with the simple -ile (past subjunctive) multi-verbal conjugation, although its meaning does diverge somewhat from that of the perfective (especially with stative verbs)

Ba ile ba bina They did sing

[edit] Conjugation

Verbal conjugation is by far the most complex and varied topic in the Bantu languages. The tenses are conjugated by means of prefixes and infixes indicating person, mood, implication, and aspect.

There are two conjugations, the positive and negative, and most tenses have corresponding forms in each. The language recognises four moods: the indicative, the subjunctive, the potential, and the participial sub-mood. The moods may be divided into tenses according to time (remote past, immediate past, present, immediate future, and remote future) and implication (simple, progressive, and exclusive), which may be further subdivided according to aspect into indefinite, continuous, and perfect.

There are also many often complex compound tenses, indicated by changes in tone and the use of deficient verbs (multi-verbal conjugations).

Import refers to how the object of the verb is indicated.

Verbs can be either:

• Intransitive, with no direct object

Ke a thola I become quiet

• Transitive, with a single direct object

Ke a o leboha I thank you

• Ditransitive, with two objects

Ke fa ngwaneso mofaho I give my sibling food for the journey

• Locative, with locative construction indicated by -ng/-eng

Ke kena lapeng I enter my home

• Agentive verbs (usually passives), which need a copulative used as an agent adverb indicated by ke-

Ba thuswa ke bukantswe They are helped by the dictionary

• Instrumental verbs, which use an instrumental adverb indicated by ka-

Re eta ka koloi We travel by car

• Conjunctive verbs (mostly reciprocals), which use the conjunctive enclitic le-

Re dumellana le bona We agree with them

Many verbs can have more than one import (-tsamaya walk can be locative, instrumental, or conjunctive; -bua speak can be intransitive, transitive, instrumental, or conjunctive) and verb derivatives can also change the import of the stem.

Many shades of meaning are achieved by the employment of deficient verbs in multi-verbal conjugations. Many tenses and moods may only be formed in this manner.

[edit] Tenses

The Sesotho tense system is somewhat less complex than that of other Bantu languages. Whereas many Bantu languages divide the time into remote past, immediate past, present, immediate future, and remote future, not all Sesotho moods divide very clearly between immediate and remote tenses, and the differences in meaning are not as great.

Examples indicating the tenses (positive simple indicative mood)

Tense	Example
Present	Ke tseba nnete I know the truth
Past perfect	Ke tsebile nnete I knew the truth
Immediate past	Ke tswa tseba nnete I just recently knew the truth
Immediate future	Ke ilo tseba nnete I shall know the truth soon
Future	Ke tla tseba nnete I shall know the truth

[edit] Moods

There are basically four moods.

• The indicative mood indicates what is, was, or will be. It uses the basic subjectival concord.
• The potential mood indicates that an action is possible. It uses similar concords to those of the subjunctive.
• The participial sub-mood is so-called since it has forms corresponding to the tenses of both the above moods. It is widely used after certain conjunctives, in forming the complements of numerous multi-verbal tenses, and in the formation of relative clauses.
• The subjunctive mood is used in subordinate or consecutive constructions, in many cases being parallel in usage to the Latin subjunctive.

Examples indicating the moods (present tense)

Mood	Positive	Negative
Indicative	Ke tseba nnete I know the truth	Ha ke tsebe nnete I do not know the truth
Potential	Nka tseba nnete I may know the truth	Nke ke ka tseba nnete I may not know the truth
Participial	...ke tseba nnete ...while I know the truth	...ke sa tsebe nnete ...while I do not know the truth
Subjunctive	...ke tsebe nnete ...so I may know the truth	...ke se tsebe nnete ...so I may not know the truth

[edit] Implication

Within the indicative and participial moods, tenses may be further sub-divided according to the implication of the action.

• The simple implication indicates an action in no way qualified.
• The progressive implication indicates an ongoing action.
• The exclusive implication indicates on an action which has not been happening until now.

Examples indicating implication (indicative mood)

Implication	Example
Simple	Ke tseba nnete I know the truth
Progressive	Ke sa tseba nnete I still know the truth
Exclusive	Ke se ke tseba nnete I now know the truth

[edit] Aspects

The tenses may be further divided according to the aspect of the action.

In Sesotho there are at least three aspects, the definite, the continuous, and the perfect.

Examples indicating aspect (with a multi-verbal past tense)

Aspect	Example
Definite	Ke ile ka tseba I did know
Continuous	Ke ne ke tseba I knew
Perfect	Ke ne ke tsebile I had known

[edit] Deficient verbs

Deficient verbs, so called because they require a subordinate or complementary verb to complete their action, are used to form many tenses and to impart certain shades of meaning. They form part of multi-verbal conjugations comprised of a string of verbs (each with its own subjectival concord) and verbal auxiliaries.

Deficient verbs, being "deficient", are never used alone. Many of them are irregular in form and have irregular inflexions. Monosyllabic deficient verbs are never used with the penultimate e- that is sometimes used with normal verbs.

Many of these verbs seem radical in nature, while others (especially those with complex implications) are obviously derived from certain extant normal verbs (but are used with slightly different meanings). What distinguishes the deficient usage of these normal verbs is the fact that they are followed by another verb and affect its meaning.

Ke se ke sa tsebe I no longer know

Ke ne ke tseba I knew

Ke tla be ke tseba I shall know

nka be ke ile ka tseba I should/would have known

Nka hla ka tseba I may indeed know

Ke tla mpe ke tsebe I will at least know

Nka nna ka tseba I may still know

Ka batla ke tseba I nearly knew

Nke ke ka hlola ke tseba I shall no longer know

Ke tshwanetse ho tseba I have to know

[edit] Copulatives

A copulative is a word which does the work of a predicative, and which is formed from some other part of speech by modification of a prefix or concord, or by means of some formative addition.^[11]

Complete predicates and sentences may be formed with substantives, qualificatives, or adverbs without employing any verbs, according to definite rules. These copulatives generally take the place of the verb "to be" in English. In Sesotho, there are also conjugations of the copulative using verbs (-ba, -le, and -na, as well as their inflected forms) giving meanings of "to become" and "to have."

[edit] Forming the copulative

There are six basic rules, used in differing situations, used to form the most basic copulatives. The first two rules do not use any verbs (the zero copula) using only changes in tone and/or the copulative formative ke-. The other rules employ the irregular verb -le.

The rules may be classed into 3 categories (plain predication or zero copula, participial, past relative clause participial) and each category may be further divided into 2 groups (all persons with qualificatives and adverbs and 1st. and 2nd. persons substantives, versus 3rd. person substantives). Each rule further has its own unique negative.

The copulative in plain predication

Type	All qual. & adv., 1st. & 2nd. subst.		3rd. subst.
Plain	Rule 1		Rule 2
	+	SC + CB	+	ke + CB
	–	ha + SC + CB	–	hase + CB
Participial	Rule 3		Rule 4
	+	SC + le and CB	+	e + le and CB
	–	SC + se and CB	–	e + se and CB
Relative	Rule 5		Rule 6
	+	RC + le + ng and CB	+	DE and e + le + ng and CB
	–	RC + se + ng and CB	–	DE and e + se + ng and CB

SC indicates the subjectival concord, CB is the copulative base, RC is the relative concord, and DE is the demonstrative element. This is one instance where the relative concords for the 1st. and 2nd. persons may be used.

Note that the participial sub-mood is the basis for all relative clause constructions (used in rules 3 to 6).

• Rule 1: To form copulatives from qualificatives and adverbs, with all persons and classes as subjects, and from substantives with 1st. and 2nd. person subjects, the subjectival concord is prefixed to the unchanged word or word-base. The prefix ha is used in the negative. It also has a definite tone pattern which avoids ambiguity with plain uses of qualificatives. In the case of adjectives, the subjectival concord (lowered in tone) takes the place of the "relative" part of the adjectival concord.

  Dinku tseo di ntle Those sheep are fine

  Batho ba baholo [ _ _ _ _ ¯ _ ] Those people are large

  Contrast the last example with Batho ba baholo [ _ _ ¯ _ ¯ _ ] The large people. In the case of relatives, the subjectival concord takes the place of the relative concord and the relative stem functions as the copulative.

  Mangau a hlaha Cheetahs are wild

  Batho ba botswa [ _ _ _ _ ¯ ] The people are lazy

  Contrast the last example with Batho ba botswa [ _ _ ¯ _ ¯ ] The lazy people. With the enumerative ng (one) the subjectival concord is prefixed to the enumerative with the enumerative concord. The other enumeratives are not used in this way.

  Sefate se seng The tree is one

  With (mainly locative) adverbs the subjectival concord is simply prefixed to the adverb.

  Re hae We are home

  The first and second persons are only used with substantival bases in using this rule.

  Ke motho I am a person

  Re bona We are them

  The negative of all these formations may be formed by simply prefixing the low toned ha-. This is exactly the same way that the negatives of most verbs in most tenses and moods are formed. Additionally, just as with verb negatives, the subjectival concord for class 1 nouns becomes a-.

  Phahlo tsa ka ha di metsi My clothes are not wet

• Rule 2: To form copulatives from substantives with a third person or noun class noun, the high toned prefix ke- is used in the positive and hase- in the negative. This -se- should not be confused with the difficient verb -se (used in rules 3 to 6).

  Monna enwa ke tona-kgolo This man is the minister

  Ntlo eo hase ya ka That house is not mine (qualificative pronoun)

  Ke bano There they are

  Ke motho [ ¯ _ _ ] He/she/it is a person

  Contrast the last example with Ke motho [ _ _ _ ] I am a person.
• Rule 3: To form participials of copulatives of qualificatives and adverbs with all persons and classes as subject, and from substantives with 1st. and 2nd. person subjects, the subjectival concord is prefixed to the auxiliary verb -le preceding the copulative base. The negative uses the irregular negative -se of the verb.

  Leha re le basebetsi Although we are labourers

  Ha ba le molemo If they are worthwhile (class 2)

  Ha di se ntle If they are not good (class 8 or 10)

  This is the usual way of using the enumerative -ng (one).

  Leha selemo se le seng Although the year is one

• Rule 4: To form participials of copulatives from substantives with a 3rd. person or noun class subject, the indefinite concord e- is prefixed to the verb -le. The negative uses the irregular negative -se of the verb.

  Ha e le moetapela If she is the leader

  Leha e se ngwana'ka Although she is not my child

• Rule 5: To form relative clauses in present time of copulatives falling under rule 3, employ the direct relative concord and suffix -ng to -le (-se in the negative).

  Nna ke leng motho I who is a person

  Dikgomo di leng naheng The cattle which are in the veld

• Rule 6: To form relative clauses in present time of copulatives falling under rule 4, employ the indirect relative construction with a demonstrative element followed by the subjectival indicator e-, preceding the verb -le (-se in the negative), with the relative suffix -ng.

  Batho bao e leng baruta-bana People who are teachers

  Batho bao e seng makgoba People who are not slaves

[edit] The indefinite concord ho-

Indefinite copulative construction is achieved by using the class 17 concord ho- prefixed to the subject. Except with adverbs of manner, this always gives a locative implication to the construction.^[12]

Ho monna ka tlung There is a man in the house

Ha ho monna ka tlung There isn't a man in the house

A more common form in the positive uses ho na le- instead of ho-. The negative of this is ha ho na

Ho na le dijo ka mokotleng There is food in the bag

Ha ho na dikgomo tse ngata There are not a lot of cattle (lit. There are not cattle which are a lot)

[edit] Conjugation

Just like verbal conjugation, the conjugation possibilities of copulatives are varied and complex, with most tenses needing deficient verbs and/or verbal infixes. What follows is only a brief overview of some points.

There is a two way division between direct and associative forms of the conjugation. The direct forms generally mean "to become" while the associative forms mean "to have."

In the direct form the auxiliary verb -ba is commonly employed. This verb is inceptive and (when used as a transitive verb) means "become" (not "is", which is indicated by the direct non-verbal copulative).

Thus there are two main aspects of the direct copulative conjugation, the inceptive and the stative. In the former -ba appears; in most multi-verbal tenses of the latter the verb -le is used, though not all tenses may conjugate in this aspect. In all there are about than 35 basic tenses in the direct inceptive, and 13 in the stative.

E bile sebini selemo se fetileng He became a professional singer last year

E ne e se mohatsa wa hae He was not her spouse

The associative form of the copulative conjugation generally signifies "to have" (lit. "to be with"). It too shares a division between inceptive and stative aspects, the former using -ba with the conjunction le- (conjunctive import), and the latter using -na with le-. This conjunctive le-, which is a prefix attached to the verb's object, is not to be confused with the copulative verb -le. In all there are about 30 basic tenses in the inceptive and 10 in the stative.

Ke tla ba le ngwana I shall have a child

Re tla be re na le bopaki We shall (at some specific time) have evidence. Note the deficient verb -be used with the infix -tla- to show the continuous future positive tense, with an implication of the time being known.

A few more examples follow.

Ke tla be ke sa be le kgotso I will (at that time) not have any peace. Stative inceptive indicative future negative.

Ha o a ka wa ba moholo ha kana It (class 3) has never ever been as big as this. Direct inceptive subjunctive past negative.

[Kgwedi] E se e le Tshitwe It [the month] is now December. Direct stative exclusive positive.

[edit] Adverbs

Adverbs are words which describe qualificatives, predicatives, or other adverbs with respect to time, place, or manner.

As in many other Bantu languages, there is a close relationship in Sesotho between adverbs and nouns, with many adverbs appearing as normal nouns and many locatives of nouns being used as adverbs. However, the function of an adverb is always clearly distinct from that of a noun.

[edit] Adverbs of place

Generally all adverbs of place are "locatives", which are inflected nouns and pronouns. These are formed by certain rules of inflexion listed below. They generally indicate the place at, on, in, into etc from which the action takes place. When used with nouns indicating time they may denote time rather than place.

The actuall meaning of a locative is determined by the verb used or the context.

Ba ya thabeng They go to the mountain

Ba tswa thabeng They come from the mountain

Ba dutse thabeng They are sitting on the mountain

The locative merely indicates the place brought into relationship with the verb, thus the many prepositions used in English are completely unnecessary in the Sesotho language.

These are the rules for forming the locative from nouns:

• Most nouns except those of class 1a suffix a low tone -ng. This suffix comes from Ur-Bantu *nî which results in vowel raising

lerako wall ⇒ lerakong

• Non-class 1a nouns ending with a replace it with -eng

thaba mountain ⇒ thabeng

• Non-class 1a nouns ending with the syllabic nasal ng suffix -ng as usual, resulting in two consecutive syllabic nasals nng

dilhong shame ⇒ dilhonng

• Class 1a nouns assume the high tone prefix ho-.

kgaitsedi opposite sex sibling ⇒ ho kgaitsedi

• Nouns indicating persons (except those in class 1a) may use both the prefix or the suffix

setloholo grandchild ⇒ setloholong, ho setloholo

• Many nouns, such as place names and nouns indicating times are used without any modification

lehlabula summer, in the summer

While ho- is used to mean "at", its possessive form ha- is used to indicate "at the place of"

Ke tswa ha rangwane I come from my younger uncle's place

Locatives may be formed from pronouns (except the quantitative) by prefixing ho- and its possessive form ha-

Ba tswa ho wane motse They come from that town

Furthermore, there are class 16, 17, and 18 nouns, certain forms with the prefix ko- (an irregular unchanged Ur-Bantu class 17 prefix *ku-, possibly from the Serolong dialect of Setswana), and some other nouns, all used uninflected as locative adverbs.

[edit] Adverbs of time

Apart from certain locative formations with a temporal implication, many nouns and seemingly radical adverbs may be used as adverbs of time.

kgale a long time ago

bosiu Night, at night

mantsiboya afternoon, in the afternoon

mohla day, in the day (Mehla ea Malimo (in Lesotho orthography) "In the Days of Cannibals" is a historical 1911 story by Edouard Motsamai about Difaqane)

Some use the high tone prefix ka- to form adverbs of time. These nouns include days of the week and months of the year. Certain other nouns which accept the suffix -ng may also take this prefix instead.

Phupu July ⇒ ka Phupu in July

Labone Thursday ⇒ ka Labone on Thursday

[edit] Adverbs of manner

Some adverbs of manner are radical in formation, others are miscellaneous formations from nouns. There are also several ways of forming adverbs of time from other parts of speech by using affixes (ha-, the conjunctive le-, ka-, jwaleka- (which is actually a complete word followed by a prefix), the copulative ke-, etc).

-ng one ⇒ hang once (also hang hang post-haste)

-ngata many ⇒ hangata often

mmoho together

tjena thus

ke mohlotse ka bohlale I defeated him with my genius

ka boomo on purpose

ke shwele ke tlala! I am dead from hunger! (I'm so hungry I could eat a horse!)

[edit] The interrogative

The high tone adverb na is used to mark questions. It, and its variant forms, may appear before, after, or both before and after the complete sentence.

Na o buile le yena? Did you speak to her?

[edit] Ideophones

An ideophone is a word, often onomatopoeic in nature, which describes the qualities of a predicative, qualificative, or adverb.

In the Bantu languages ideophones form a distinct part of speech, which resembles o a certain extent the adverb in function, but unlike which it may (in some languages) be used as a predicate. In Sesotho there are two ways of using ideophones; one involves the use of the verb ho re which in this case means "to express" instead of the usual "to say." The other way involves simply placing the ideophone after a verb or qualificative with the aim of intensifying its meaning.

Often when using ideophones in speech, the speaker may accompany the utterance with an action (indeed, with the ideophone mpf "of being finished completely" the action — running ones index finger very close in front of the lips — is necessary to pronounce the word properly).

ho re fi! to suddenly become dark, lebone la tima fi! the light suddenly went out

ho re twa! to be very white, diphahlo di tshweu twa! the clothes are very white

ho re pududu to be gray or dirty, o mo putswa pududu his is rather gray (from dirt or from not applying moisturiser after bathing)

The verb -re when used with ideophones may take a direct object (indicated by an objectival concord)

ho mo re mu! to hit him over the head with a walking stick

This illustrates that the ideophone itself is neither transitive nor intransitive, and they are usually translated to English with the construction "of...."

to! of being alone

Many Sesotho ideophones are radicals, and many of them are shared by many Bantu languages (such as Sesotho tu! and isiZulu du!/dwi! of silence), though many are formed from other parts of speech. Indeed it is common for a speaker to intensify the meaning of a descriptive word or verb by improvising ideophones and placing them after the word, or by simply leaving the listener to surmise the meaning from the context or accompanying action.

a e tshawara tshwari!, a e re tshwari! he grabbed it (accompanied by the action of reaching out and quickly grasping an invisible object)

a mo re kgom! and he grabbed him by his shirt (accompanied by the speaker performing the action on himself)

Ideophones, being very emotional in nature, tend to not follow the phonetic rules of the language and may be pronounced in peculiar ways. For example, the stress may fall on the last or first syllable of all ideophones regardless of length, vowels may be indefinitely lengthened (po... of being cold), syllabic r may be heard (tjerr of frying), the last syllable may have a coda (thethengtheng of performing with a stop), prenasalized consonants may occur (kgampepe of running), vowels may be devocalised (phu of smelling bad), and various consonants not found in core Sesotho may be used (vi... of a thrown projectile travelling through the air in a hyperbolic path). There is even a case of three syllabic nasals with contrasting tones pronounced with three separated air breaths (not as a very long nasal with an undulating tone) nnng [ _ ¯ _ ] of refusing outright.

[edit] Conjunctives

Conjunctives introduce or join up sentences.

Sesotho conjunctives may be studied from two aspects: form and function.

The are four forms of conjunctives:

1. Primitive conjunctives, which we may call conjunctions,
2. Other parts of speech unchanged in form but used as conjunctives,
3. Inflected forms of conjunctives and other parts of speech, and
4. Compounds.

There are four functions of conjunctives:

1. Non-influencing conjunctives which don't affect the grammatical mood of the succeeding predicate,
2. Conjunctives which govern the indicative mood,
3. Conjunctives which govern the subjunctive mood, and
4. Conjunctives which govern the participial sub-mood.

[edit] Forms

• Conjunctions are very rare, and many may have originated from simpler forms.

  ha if

  mme and

  kganthe whereas

• Other parts of speech unchanged including nouns, pronouns, adverbs, and deficient verbs (used with the indefinite concord e-) may be used as conjunctives.

  ho re to say ⇒ hore that/such that (pronounced with different tones)

  hola that over there (class 15 demonstrative pronoun) ⇒ hoja if only (note the irregular palatalization)

  feela only (adverb) ⇒ feela but, however

  -mpa deficient verb implying "may as well just, act notwithstanding" ⇒ empa but

• Inflected forms of conjunctives and other parts of speech may be used as conjunctives. This may be done with certain words through the use of a handfull of prefixes and suffixes.

  ha if ⇒ leha even if

  hoo class 15 demonstrative pronoun ⇒ kahoo therefore

  empa but ⇒ empaneng but

• Compounds may also be used as conjunctives.

  mohla o mong some day ⇒ mohlomong perhaps

[edit] Functions

• Non-influencing conjunctives do not affect the mood of the following predicate. They are co-ordinating and merely form compound sentences.

  Ha a ntsebe He does not know me (indicative mood) ⇒ Ke a mo tseba empa ha a ntsebe I know him but he does not know me

  Ke tlohele ho o botsa? Should I stop asking you? (subjunctive mood) ⇒ O tla nthusa ka mosebetsi ona kapa ke tlohele ho o botsa? Will you help me with this work or should I stop asking you?

• Conjunctives which govern the indicative mood are followed by clauses in the indicative mood.

  O itse o a mo tseba kganthe o ne a re thetsa He said he knew him and yet he was lying to us

  O a bona hore pula e a na You can see that it's raining (this hore is pronounced with tone pattern [ _ _ ])

• Conjunctives which govern the subjunctive mood are followed by clauses in the subjunctive mood.

  Le hloka ho potlaka hore le fihle ka nako You need to hurry up in order that you may arrive on time (this hore is pronounced with tone pattern [ _ ¯ ])

• Conjunctives which govern the participial sub-mood are followed by clauses in the participial sub-mood. Note that some of these conjunctives are followed by a pure participial form, while others are followed by a relative construction (since all relative clauses in Sesotho are in the participial sub-mood).

  Le ka e qeta ha le ikemiseditse You can finish it if you are prepared/willing

  Ba ba buletse leha ba ne ba se ba kwetse They opened for them although they had already closed (this participial clause differs from its indicative counterpart only in tone)

  O bontshitse a sa thaba kamoo a neng a bua kateng He showed that he was sad from the way in which he was speaking

[edit] Interjectives

Interjectives are isolated words or groups of words of an exclamatory nature, used to express emotion, or for the purpose of calling attention, giving commands, or conveying assent or dissent. They may themselves also constitute complete sentences, without the use of predicates.

In the Bantu languages interjectives may be divided into three types:

1. Radical interjectives, or interjections,
2. Vocatives, and
3. Verb imperatives.

• Interjections have no grammatical or concordial bearing on the sentence; they are merely attached as appendages. As with ideophones, their emotional nature causes some of them to be pronounced in peculiar ways, but these irregularities are not as great as those exhibited by ideophones.

  dumelang! greetings!

  kgele! of astonishment

  nxa of contempt (really just an isolated lateral click)

  ehee of approval (the final vowel is lengthened)

  hela! of calling

  itjhu! of pain ("ouch!")

  tjhee of dissent ("no") (the final vowel is long with a low rising tone [ / ])

  e'e of dissent (the two vowels are separated by a glottal stop)

  e of assent ("yes") (the vowel is long with a high falling tone [ \ ])

  eish of being dumfounded (this is a common interjection among all language groups in the more cosmopolitan areas of South Africa)

• Vocatives are formed in Sesotho from nouns and 2nd. person pronouns (since all proper vocatives are naturally addressed to "the second person"). No change in form takes form in the noun.

  banna! oh my! (only used by men)

  wena! hey you!

  mmao! your mother! (used as an insult similar to Afrikaans "jou ma!")

  A suffix -towe and its plural equivalent -ting may be used to indicate insult

  molotsana towe! you wretched evil hag!

  The adverbial instrumental prefix ka- is used to form interjectives of oath

  ka ntate by my father!

• Imperatives have neither subjects nor subjectival concords. They are 2nd. person forms, and have the same force as other interjectives, but, being verbal, they may also take objects and assume extensions. The rules for the formation of the singular imperative are as follows:
  • Verbs with more than one syllable are used without any modification

  matha run!

  • Most monosyllabic verbs may either suffix -a or prefix e-

  -tswa exit ⇒ etswa!/tswaa get out!

  • The verbs -re (say), -ya (go), and -ba only use the prefix

  -re say ⇒ ere

  • The imperative of the verb -tla (come) is tloo^[13]
  The negative may be formed in several ways
  • By prefixing se- to the basic verb and changing the a to an e

  -ja eat ⇒ eja/jaa eat!, se je do not eat!

  • By using se- with the infix -ka- with no change in the verb's final vowel

  -kena enter ⇒ se ka kena don't come in!

  • A commonly used negative, although technically not an interjective (as it contains a subjectival concord) is made by employing the deficient verb -ke in the subjunctive mood (that is, with the "auxiliary concord" prefixed to the main verb). The above negative is most probably a contraction of this form (hence the final vowel was not changed due to the contracted concord)

  bua speak ⇒ o se ke wa bua don't say a word!

  If the first person is included in the plural subjects, the hortative prefix ha- is used in the subjunctive mood. This is an example of the cohortative mood (a form of the subjunctive)

  ha re se ke ra ya let us rather not go

  Again in the subjunctive mood, an object may be specified in all of the above forms by an objectival concord. This is in the subjunctive mood, and so the final vowel of the verb changes to e (in the positive) or e (in the negative) when the deficient verb -ke is not used

  -jwetsa tell ⇒ ba jwetse tell them!, le se ke la ba jwetsa y'all should not tell them!, ha re ba jwetse let's tell them!

  Sometimes an epenthetic h or y may be inserted between the two a's or o's for emphasis. Except for forms employing subjectival concords, the plural is formed by adding the suffix -ng to the verb (or the deficient verb -ke when it is used). This -ng may regularly result in vowel raising if the verb ends with the open vowel e

  se matheng y'all must not run!

  When subjunctive tenses are used "imperatively" they are not interjectives since they have subjectival concords (and have more typical verbal tonal patterns), but note that in this case there is a distinction between singular, dual, and plural number in the 1st. person. In this case dual number is marked by the hortative prefix ha- and 1st. plural subjectival concord, and plural is marked by the prefix, the concord, and the suffix -ng to the verb (or the deficient verb -ke if it is used).

  matha! run! (singular 2nd. person)

  ha re mathe! let (the two of) us run! (dual 1st. person)

  ha re matheng! let us (more than two) run! (plural 1st. person)

  ha re se keng ra matha let us (more than two) not run! (plural 1st. person negative)

  All imperatives addressed to the 2nd. person (even if that person is included in a 1st. person plural) may be strengthened by using the enclitic {h|[bo]|-bo}. This formative leaves the stress in place, thus resulting in words with stress on the antepenultimate syllable.

  matha bo! run I say!

  [edit] Concords

  Just as the sentence centres around the noun, the noun is made to "concórd" ("agree") with the verbs, pronouns, qualificatives and relative clauses describing it by a set of noun concords.

  There are seven basic sets of concords. Each noun class has concords in each set, and the first and second persons have unique concords in some of the sets (the third person uses the class 1 and 2 concords).

  In form, the concords closely resemble the class prefixes, and it is not unreasonable to assume that originally the other parts of speech were made to agree with the noun by simply prefixing them with the noun's class prefix. Today, in Sesotho, the vowels and consonants of the prefixes have been modified slightly in largely predictable ways.

  In addition to these seven concords, there are two further immutable concord-like prefixes used in certain situations with verbs.

  Sesotho is a pro-drop language in that in most situations separate words (such as pronouns) do not need to be used with verbs to indicate the subject and object (they may be inferred from the subjectival and objectival concords).

  Noun class concords

  Class	Pronomial	Relative	Adjectival	Enumerative	Possessive	Subjectival	Objectival
  First and second persons
  (1st. pers. sg)	[N]-	(ke-)	–	–	–	ke-	[N]-
  (1st. pers. pl.)	ro-	(re-)	–	–	–	re-	re-
  (2nd. pers. sg.)	we-	(o-)	–	–	–	o-	o-
  (2nd. pers. pl.)	lo-	(le-)	–	–	–	le-	le-
  Third persons and noun classes
  Class 1(a)	ye-	ya-	e mo-	mo-, o-	wa-	o-	mo-
  Class 2(a)	bo-	ba-	ba ba-	ba-	ba-	ba-	ba-
  Class 3	oo-	o-	o mo-	mo-, o-	wa-	o-	o-
  Class 4	yo-	e-	e me-	me-, e-	ya-	e-	e-
  Class 5	lo-	le-	le le-	le-	la-	le-	le-
  Class 6, (cl. 14 pl.)	oo-	a-	a ma-	ma-, a-	a-	a-	a-
  Class 7	so-	se-	se se-	se-	sa-	se-	se-
  Class 8	tso-	tse-	tse [N]-	di-	tsa-	di-	di-
  Class 9	yo-	e-	e [N]-	[N]-, e-	ya-	e-	e-
  Class 10, (cl. 6 alt. pl.)	tso-	tse-	tse [N]-	di-	tsa-	di-	di-
  Class 14	bo-	bo-	bo bo-	bo-	ba-	bo-	bo-
  Class 15, 16, 17, 18	ho-	ho-	ho ho-	ho-	ha-	ho-	ho-

  Immutable concord-like verb prefixes

  Reflexive	Indefinite
  i[N]-	e-

  Notes on the tables:

  1. As per usual, [N] means that nasalization will occur with the syllabic nasal appearing only for monosyllabic stems.
  2. "Class 1(a)" means class 1 and class 1a, while "class 2(a)" means class 2 and class 2a. Each group of classes uses the exact same concords, differing only in the class prefix and content.
  3. Those few class 14 nouns with plurals use the exact same prefix and concords as class 6.
  4. The class 6 nouns with the prefix di[N]- look exactly the same as, and have the exact same concords as, class 10 nouns.
  5. All the locative classes (classes 16, 17, and 18) use the same concords, which resemble those of class 15. Even class 17, whose prefix has an unusual high tone, uses the exact same tone patterns as the others.
  6. When two forms of enumerative concords occur, the first one is the "strong" one, and the second is the "weak."

  In the following discussion, weakening a prefix means removing the m nasal from the class 1, 3, and 6 prefixes, leaving only the vowel. In the examples, the noun and its concord are in bold and the word or clause which concords with it is underlined.

  • The pronomial concords are used in the formation of the absolute pronouns. In form they very roughly appear to be the weakened prefix followed by the open-mid back vowel o. They all have a low tone. Doke & Mofokeng claims that in fact the pronomial concords are derived from the absolute pronouns.

    Bataki ba sebedisa matsoho a bona ho hlola Artists use their hands to create

  • The relative concords are used to concord with relatives and relative clauses. In form, for the noun classes, they appear to be the weakened prefixes coalesced with the close-mid front vowel e. This coalescence has the effect of moving the close and near-close front vowels e and i to close-mid front e, moving the near-close back vowel o to the close-mid back o, and alveolarizing the consonant l to ts. The class 9 concord is e and class 1(a) has an irregular concord ya suggesting an inherent close-mid front e vowel. They all have a high tone. The relative concords for the 1st. and 2nd. persons resemble the subjectival concords and are only rarely used, and only for relative clauses (never with relative stems). They usually use the class 1(a) and 2(a) concords instead.

    Ke ikutlwa ke itshepa leha ba re hlahlobo ena e thatanyana I feel confident although they say that this test is a bit difficult

    Ke kopa hore [batho] ba batlang ho ingodisetsa ba mpolelle pele ho Labohlano lena Would those [people] who wish to sign up please tell me before this Friday

  • The adjectival concords are used with adjectival stems. In form they appear to be the relative concords followed by the class prefix. Class 1(a) has an irregular concord e mo-. The di[N]- classes have irregular concords tse [N]- instead of the expected tse di[N]-, though this is their form are in Setswana. The syllabic nasals do not nasalize adjectives beginning with hl. They all have tone pattern [ ¯ _ ]. The first and second persons use the class 1(a) and 2(a) adjectival concords.

    Mabone a sethuthuthu sa ka a makgubedu a ne a sa sebetse My motorbike's red lights were not working

  • The enumerative concords are used with the enumerative stems. In form, the weak concords appear to simply be the weakened form of the prefix, while the strong concords are just the class prefixes. The weak concord for class 9 has the irregular form e-. They have a low tone with weak stems and a high tone with strong stems.

    O mphile lebitso la hlooho ya lefapha lesele You gave me the name of the head of the wrong department

  • The possessive concords are with possessives. In form they appear to be formed from the subjectival concord by addition of the vowel a with various regular phonological side effects. They all have a high tone.

    Ke bone setshwantsho sa hae maobane I saw her photograph yesterday

  • The subjectival concords concord with the subject of a verb. They are placed at the beginning of the word containing the verb, before any possible verbal infixes^[6] and the objectival concord. In a multi-verbal conjugation they appear before every deficient verb (with the exception of contractions) as well as the main verb. The subjectival concord is needed even if the subject is explicitly stated. In form they appear to simply be the weakened prefix (class 9 [N] weakening to e-). The forms given above are only for the positive indicative mood. In the indicative negative, the subjunctive, the potential, and the participial moods class 1(a) becomes a-. In the potential mood (the ka- multi-verbal conjugation) 1st. pers. sg. is [N] (nka and nke ke). In the past subjunctive an assimilated infix -a- affects all the concords, resulting in what is sometimes called the "auxiliary concord."

    The past subjunctive "auxiliary concord"

    Class	Auxiliary concord
    First and second persons
    (1st. pers. sg)	ka-
    (1st. pers. pl.)	ra-
    (2nd. pers. sg.)	wa-
    (2nd. pers. pl.)	la-
    Third person and noun classes
    Class 1(a)	a-
    Class 2(a)	ba-
    Class 3	wa-
    Class 4	ya-
    Class 5	la-
    Class 6, (cl. 14 pl.)	a-
    Class 7	sa-
    Class 8	tsa-
    Class 9	ya-
    Class 10, (cl. 6 alt. pl.)	tsa-
    Class 14	ba-
    Class 15, 16, 17, 18	ha-

    The concords for the persons are low toned, and those for the noun classes are high toned.

    [Nna] Nka se kgone ho o thusa ke na le wa ka mosebetsi [Me] I won't be able to help you while I have my own tasks

    [Thabang]Ha a mo kgalema [Thabang] He did not reprimand him

    Ntate Ditedu o kopa ho bua le wena hona jwale Mister Ditedu asks to speak to you right now

  • The objectival concords concord with the object of a verb. They are placed right next to the main verb stem. In a multi-verbal conjugation they are used only with the main verb. In form they resemble the subjectival concords, differing only at the 1st. pers. sg. and class 1(a). Before verb stems beginning with a b the mo- + b- combination contracts to mm-. They all have low tone.

    Ke ne ke se ke sa di batle dikobo tseo I no longer wanted those blankets

    Ke tla le eletsa [lona] hore le etseng ha ke se ke rarollotse bothata bona I shall advise y'all [y'all] on what to do when I have dealt with this issue

    Ha re so mmotse [Mme MmaSeremi] ka kabo ya ditjhelete We haven't yet asked her [Mrs. Seremi] about the budget (verb botsa ask)

    O hloka ho ntlhompha [nna] ke le molaodi wa hao You need to respect me [I] as your director (verb hlompha respect)

  • The reflexive prefix is used to form reflexive verbs. It is not a concord in that it does not agree with any noun prefix, but it exhibits concord-like behaviour. It is simply the close vowel i with the additional effect of nasalizing the verb to which it is attached. Thus its form is i[N]-. It is used with transitive verb stems without the objectival concord (it basically replaces the objectival concord).

    O tshwanetse ho lo itatela yona He is supposed to fetch it for himself (verb ho latela to fetch on behalf of)

    When used with causative verbs it often has the meaning of "pretend to be"

    -shwa die ⇒ -shwesa cause to die (never used directly) ⇒ Ho itjhwesa To feign death (lit. to cause oneself to die)

    -robala sleep ⇒ -robatsa cause to sleep ⇒ Ho ithobatsa To pretend to be asleep (lit. to cause oneself to sleep)

  • The indefinite concord is used in certain copulative constructions. It only exists as a subjectival concord and appears in form to be the subjectival (and "auxiliary") concord of class 9.

    The indefinite concord

    Subjectival	Auxiliary
    e-	ya-

    It is only used as the subjectival concord for 3rd. persons and noun classes in the direct tense of the copulative employing the verbs -ba, -le, and -se (including multi-verbal conjugations), when the copulative base is a noun or pronoun.

    Ka nako eo, monna enwa e ne e se e le lekwala By that time, this man was already a coward (not *...o ne a se a le lekwala)

    Ka nako eo, monna enwa o ne a se a le boi By that time, this man was already afraid (not *...e ne e se e le boi)

  [edit] Orthography

  Sesotho is written in the Latin alphabet with a few diacritics used in Lesotho writing. Like most languages written using the Latin alphabet, it does not use all the letters and several digraphs and trigraphs represent single sounds.

  Tone is never indicated, and ambiguities in print are often mitigated by elaborating in a way that would have been unnecessary in speech (such as using absolute pronouns in addition to concords).

  [edit] Lesotho versus South African writing

  One issue which complicates the written language are the two divergent orthographies used by the two countries with the largest number of first language speakers. The Lesotho orthography is older than the South African one and differs from it not only in the choice of letters and the marking of initial syllabic nasals, but also (to a much lesser extent) in written word division and the use of diacritics on vowels to distinguish some ambiguous spellings.

  Differences between South African and Lesotho written consonants and approximants

  South African	Lesotho version	Example
  di, du	li, lu	ho kadima — ho kalima to lend
  kg	kh	kgotso — khotso peace
  kh	k'h	sekhona — sek'hona type of clay pot
  tsh	tš	Motsheanong — Motšeanong May
  tjh	ch	ho tjha — ho cha to burn
  y	e	moya — moea air/wind/spirit
  w	o	ho utlwisisa — ho utloisisa to comprehend
  fj	fsh	ho bofjwa — ho bofshoa to be tied
  pjh	psh	mpjhe — mpshe ostrich

  
  When the symbol "š" is unavailable electronically, people who write in Lesotho Sesotho often use ts' to represent the aspirated alveolar affricate tš.

  
  In word-initial positions,^[14] a syllabic nasal followed by a syllable starting with the same nasal is written as an n or m in South Africa but as an apostrophe in Lesotho.

  Syllabic nasals

  South African example	Lesotho version
  nnete truth	'nete
  mme and	'me
  nnyo vagina (very crude)	'nyo
  ho nngwaya to scratch my itch	ho 'ngoaea

  Note that, when not word-initial, Lesotho orthography uses an n or m just like South African orthography.

  
  In order to distinguish between the concords of class 1(a) and the 2nd. person singular, Lesotho orthography (mis-)uses u to represent phonetic o and w for the 2nd. person, even when there is no chance of ambiguity.

  U motle You are beautiful

  O motle He/she is beautiful

  Le uena ke u elelitse I did advise you too

  Le eena ke mo elelitse I did advise him/her too

  In Lesotho, ò (for the two mid back vowels), ō (for the near-close near-back vowel), è (for the two mid front vowels), and ē (for the near-close near-front vowel) are sometimes used to avoid spelling ambiguities. This is never done in South African writing.

  ho tšèla to pour — ho tšēla to cross

  ho ròka to sing a praise poem — ho rōka to sew

  These examples also have differing tone patterns.

  Although the two orthographies tend to use similar written word divisions, they do differ on three points:

  1. More often than not compounds that are written as one word in South African Sesotho will be written with dashes in Lesotho Sesotho

  moetapele — moeta-pele leader

  1. The prosodic penultimate e- that is sometimes affixed to monosyllabic verbs is written with a dash in Lesotho

  eba! — e-ba! be!

  1. The indicative marker -a- is inserted between the subject concord and the verb stem in different ways in the two orthographies

  Dikgomo di a fula — Likhomo lia fula The cows are grazing

  1. The class 2a prefix is simply attached to the class 1a noun in South Africa but Lesotho orthography uses a dash

  ntate father ⇒ bontate (South African), bo-ntate (Lesotho)

  Very often South Africans with recent ancestors from Lesotho have surnames written in Lesotho orthography, preserving the old spellings.

  Gloria Moshoeshoe, South African actor and talk show host

  Aaron Mokoena, South African and European soccer player

  [edit] Word division

  Like all other Bantu languages Sesotho is an agglutinative language spoken conjunctively; however, like almost all other Bantu languages it is written disjunctively. The difference lies in the characteristically European word division used for writing the language, in contrast with some Bantu languages such as the south African Nguni languages.

  This issue is investigated in more detail in The Sesotho word above.

  [edit] Notes

  1. ^ Note that the IPA symbols used for the near-close vowels in this article are different from those often used in the literature. Often the symbols /ɨ/ and /ʉ/ are used instead of the standard /ɪ/ and /ʊ/, but these two symbols represent the close central unrounded vowel and the close central rounded vowel respectively in the modern IPA.
  2. ^ Historically kg was an affricate /k͡xʰ/ and was therefore not an exception.
  3. ^ This is similar to the situation in English where /ʍ/ (written as [[wh (digraph)|]]) is pronounced as /h/ in words such as whom, whole, and whore.
  4. ^ Doke & Vilakazi cites nine pitch levels (not counting contours) for isiZulu, while admitting that they may have overlooked some factors which could have superficially increased the actual number. Subsequent work on isiZulu tonology and depressor (breathy voiced) consonants suggests that the language may be fully described with only three or even two basic tones.
  5. ^ Including the Ur-Bantu root *-ntu whence the name "Bantu languages" comes.
  6. ^ ^{a b c} The use of this term in Bantu linguistics means "formatives placed in the middle of a word" and not the more common "formatives placed in the middle of a morpheme." Bantu languages, being agglutinative, construct words by placing affixes around a stem, and if an affix is always placed after other affixes (such as in certain verb tenses and moods) then it is usually called an "infix."
  7. ^ This is a common situation in almost all Bantu languages, as their orthographies were invented by Europeans who spoke isolating languages. Notice how the class 10 prefix ho- is written separated from the verb stem (contrary to how the other class prefixes are indicated) because this is how infinitives are indicated in their languages. IsiZulu and other Nguni languages are written conjunctively, primarily due to the efforts of Doke and others. Consider the following example:

     Ke tla o thusa

     I will help you (I•FUT.+VE.INDIC•you•help)

     This would be Ngizakusiza in isiZulu. The English free morphemes may usually be moved around to make valid statements, with some change in meaning:

     Help you I will

     Will I help you(?)

     But this is absolutely impossible to do with the Sesotho bound morphemes.

     *Thusa o ke tla

     *Tla ke o thusa

  8. ^ A related phenomenon exists in Kiswahili where class 10 nouns look exactly the same as class 9 nouns but are used with different concords (corresponding to a zi- prefix).
  9. ^ In the Nguni languages, for example, prefixes are attached to the pronoun's prefix without a suffix.

     isiXhosa mna 1st. person singular absolute pronoun ⇒ unyana wam my son, uthetha nam he is speaking to me, ndim it is me, yiza'pha kum come hither to me, etc.

  10. ^ Sesotho fu often comes from Ur-Bantu *kû (otherwise *k normally corresponds to Sesotho h, though in certain other situations it corresponds to s, resulting, for example, in the language name Sesotho and not *Kesotho or *Hesotho). This may be nasalized to *͡ŋkû. Since Ur-Bantu *͡ŋk regularly corresponds to Sesotho kg, this may explain this irregular form. A similar situation occurs in Setswana, where the adjective is -hubedu (not *-gudedu) and is nasalized to -khubedu (not *-kgudebu). This nasalization is not irregular in this language, the "irregularity" is that the velar fricative g becomes the glottal fricative h before the vowel u, and is nasalized to kh.
  11. ^ There is a widely held belief among some laypersons that Bantu languages have no (easy) way of saying "X is Y"; this couldn't be further from the truth.
  12. ^ Thus linking this use of the prefix with the Bantu class 17 (Ur-Bantu *ku-).
  13. ^ Note also the irregular isiZulu woza and Kiswahili joo all meaning the same thing. Setswana and isiXhosa have regular forms in etla and yiza respectively.
  14. ^ "Word" meaning the separately written elements in the disjunctive orthography — not proper Sesotho words.

  [edit] See also

  • South African Translators' Association

  [edit] References

  • Demuth, K. In press. Sesotho speech acquisition. In S. McLeod (ed), The international guide to speech acquisition, pp 526-538. Clifton Park, NY: Thomas Delmar Learning.
  • Demuth, K. 1992. Acquisition of Sesotho. In D. Slobin (ed.), The Cross-Linguistic Study of Language Acquisition.
  • Doke, C. M., and Mofokeng, S. M. 1974. Textbook of Southern Sotho Grammar. Cape Town: Longman Southern Africa, 3rd. impression. ISBN 0 582 61700 6.
  • Doke, C.M., and Vilakazi, B.W. 1948. Zulu-English Dictionary. Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press. As cited in Schadeberg 1981.
  • Schadeberg, T.C. 1981. Tone in South African Bantu Dictionaries. In Journal of African Languages and Linguistics 3, pp 175-180.
  • Schadeberg, T.C. 1994-5. Spirantization and the 7-to-5 Vowel Merger in Bantu. In Marc Dominicy & Didier Demolin (eds), Sound Change. Belgian Journal of Linguistics, 73-84.
  • Zerbian, S. 2006. High Tone Spread in the Sotho Verb. In Selected proceedings of the 35th Annual Conference on African Linguistics, ed. John Mugane et al., 147-157. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.

  [edit] External links

  

  Sotho language edition of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
  

  Sotho language edition of Wiktionary, the free dictionary/thesaurus
  • Ethnologue report for Sesotho
  • Sesotho.web.za A gentle introduction to the Sesotho language and Basotho culture.
  • Weblog on Sesotho
  • Translate.org.za Project translating Free and Open Source Software into South African languages, including Sesotho.
  • PanAfrican L10n page on Sesotho Information on the language and localization.
  • Sesotho language tutorial A beginner's language text, designed for the US Peace Corps.

  [edit] Software

  • Spell checker for OpenOffice.org and Mozilla, OpenOffice.org, Mozilla Firefox web-browser, and Mozilla Thunderbird email program in Sesotho.
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