Tswana language

Setswana
Setswana
Spoken in	Botswana South Africa Zimbabwe Namibia
Region	Southern Africa
Native speakers	3.4 million in South Africa (2006) 1.1 million in Botswana  (1993)
Language family	Niger–Congo Atlantic–Congo Benue–Congo Bantoid Southern Bantoid Bantu Southern Bantu Sotho–Tswana Setswana
Official status
Official language in	Botswana South Africa
Regulated by	No official regulation
Language codes
ISO 639-1	tn
ISO 639-2	tsn
ISO 639-3	tsn
Linguasphere	99-AUT-eg incl. varieties 99-AUT-ega to 99-AUT-egn

Geographical distribution of Setswana in South Africa: proportion of the population that speaks Setswana at home.

0–20%   20–40%   40–60%

60–80%   80–100%

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

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

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

Tswana or Setswana is a language spoken in Southern Africa by about 4.5 million people. It is a Bantu language belonging to the Niger–Congo language family within the Sotho languages branch of Zone S (S.30), and is closely related to the Northern- and Southern Sotho languages, as well as the Kgalagadi language and the Lozi language.

Tswana is an official language and lingua franca of Botswana spoken by almost 1.1 million of its inhabitants. However, the majority of Tswana speakers are found in South Africa where 3.4 million people speak the language. Until 1994, South African Tswana people were notionally citizens of Bophuthatswana, one of the few bantustans that actually became reality as planned by the Apartheid regime. A small number of speakers are also found in Zimbabwe and Namibia, where 29,400 and 12,300 people speak the language, respectively.

History

The first person in history to describe the Tswana language was the German traveller H. Lichtenstein who lived among the Tswana people Batlhaping in 1806, although his work was not published until 1930. He mistakenly regarded Tswana as a dialect of the Xhosa language, and the name he used for the language "Beetjuana" may also have covered the Northern- and Southern Sotho languages.

The first major work on the Tswana language was carried out by the British missionary Robert Moffat who had also lived among the Batlhaping, and published Bechuana Spelling Book and A Bechuana Catechism in 1826. In the following years he published several other books of the Bible and in 1857 he was able to publish a complete translation of the Bible.

The first grammar of the Tswana language was published in 1833 by the missionary James Archbell, although it was modelled on a Xhosa grammar. The first grammar of Tswana which regarded it as a separate language from Xhosa (but still not as a separate language from the Northern- and Southern Sotho languages) was published by the French missionary E. Casalis in 1841. It should be noted though that he changes his mind later, and in a publication from 1882, he notes that the Northern- and Southern Sotho languages are distinct from Tswana.

In 1876 the South African intellectual and linguist Solomon Plaatje was born, and he became one of the first writers to extensively write in and about the Tswana language.

Phonology

Vowels

The vowel inventory of Tswana can be seen below.

	Front	Back
Close	⟨i⟩ /i/	⟨u⟩ /u/
Near-close	⟨e⟩ /ɪ/	⟨o⟩ /ʊ/
Open-mid	⟨ê⟩ /ɛ/	⟨ô⟩ /ɔ/
Open	⟨a⟩ /a/

Some dialects have two additional vowels, the close-mid vowels /e/ and /o/.

Consonants

The consonant inventory of Tswana can be seen below.

		Labial	Alveolar		Postalveolar	Palatal	Velar	Uvular	Glottal
			Central	Lateral
Nasal		⟨m⟩ /m/	⟨n⟩ /n/			⟨ny⟩ /ɲ/	⟨ng⟩ /ŋ/
Plosive	Unaspirated	⟨p⟩  ⟨b⟩ /p/  /b/	⟨t⟩  ⟨d⟩ /t/  /d/				⟨k⟩ /k/
	Aspirated	⟨ph⟩ /pʰ/	⟨th⟩ /tʰ/				⟨kh⟩ /kʰ/	⟨kg⟩ /qʰ/
Affricate	Unaspirated		⟨ts⟩ /ts/	⟨tl⟩ /tɬ/	⟨tš⟩   ⟨j⟩ /tʃ/  /dʒ/
	Aspirated		⟨tsh⟩ /tsʰ/	⟨tlh⟩ /tɬʰ/	⟨tšh⟩ /tʃʰ/
Fricative		⟨f⟩ /f/	⟨s⟩ /s/		⟨š⟩ /ʃ/			⟨g⟩ /χ/	⟨h⟩ /h/
Trill			⟨r⟩ /r/
Approximant		⟨w⟩ /w/		⟨l⟩ /l/		⟨y⟩ /j/

It should be noted that the consonant /d/ is merely an allophone of /l/, when the latter is followed by the vowels /i/ or /u/.

Tswana also has three click consonants, but these are only used in interjections or ideophones, and tend only to be used by the older generation, and are therefore falling out of use. The three click consonants are the dental click /ǀ/, orthographically ⟨c⟩; the lateral click /ǁ/, orthographically ⟨x⟩; and the palatal click /ǃ/, orthographically ⟨q⟩.

There are some minor dialectal variations among the consonants between speakers of Tswana. For instance, /χ/ is realized as either /x/ or /h/ by many speakers; /f/ is realized as /h/ in most dialects; and /tɬ/ and /tɬʰ/ are realized as /t/ and /tʰ/ in northern dialects.

Stress

Stress is fixed in Tswana and thus always falls on the penult of a word, although some compounds may receive a secondary stress in the first part of the word. It should also be noted that the syllable on which the stress falls is lengthened. Thus, mosadi is realized as [mʊ̀ˈsáːdì].

Tone

Tswana has two tones, high and low, although the latter has a much wider distribution in words than the former. Tones are not marked orthographically which may lead to ambiguity.

go bua /χʊ búa/ "to speak"

go bua /χʊ bua/ "to skin an animal"

o bua Setswana /ʊ́búa setswána/ "He speaks Setswana"

o bua Setswana /ʊbúa setswána/ "You speak Setswana"

An important feature of the tones is the so-called spreading of the high tone. If a syllable bears a high tone, the following two syllables will also get high tones, unless they are at the end of the word.

simolola /símʊlʊla/ > /símʊ́lʊ́la/ "to begin"

simologêla /símʊlʊχɛla/ > /símʊ́lʊ́χɛla/ "to begin for/at"

Grammar

Nouns

Nouns in Tswana are grouped into nine noun classes and one sub-class, each having different prefixes. The nine classes and their respective prefixes can be seen below, along with a short note regarding the common characteristics of most nouns within the respective class.

Class	Singular	Plural	Characteristics
1.	mo-	ba-	Persons
1a.	-	bô-	Names, kinship, animals
2.	mo-	me- ma-	Miscellaneous (including bodyparts, tools, instruments, animals, trees, plants)
3.	le-	ma-
4.	se-	di-
5.	n- m- ny- ng-	din- dim- diny- ding-	Animals (but also miscellaneous)
6.	lo-		Miscellaneous (including a number of collective nouns)
7.	bo-	ma-	Abstract nouns
8.	go-		Infinitive forms of verbs
9.	fa- go- mo-		Adverbs

Some nouns may be found in several classes. For instance, many nouns of the class 1 are also found in class 1a, class 3, class 4 and class 5.

References

General

• Cole, Desmond (1955), An Introduction to Tswana Grammar 
• Janson, Tore; Tsonope, Joseph (1991), Birth of a National Language: The History of Setswana, ISBN 0-435-91620-3 
• University of Botswana (2001), The Sound System of Setswana, ISBN 99912-71-21-X 

External links

• Map of Tswana language from the LL-Map Project
• Information on Tswana language from the MultiTree Project
• Peace Corps Botswana: An Introduction to the Setswana Language
• Setswana: Grammar Handbook. Peace Corps Language Handbook Series