Sesotho orthography Totally Explained

Everything about Sesotho Orthography totally explained

The orthography of the Sesotho language is fairly recent and is based on the Latin alphabet, but, like most languages written using the Latin alphabet, it doesn't use all the letters and several digraphs and trigraphs represent single sounds.
   The orthographies used in Lesotho and South African differ, with the Lesotho variant using diacritics.
   As with almost all other Bantu languages, although the language is a tonal language, tone is never indicated.
   For an overview of the symbols used and the sounds they represent, see the phoneme tables at Sesotho phonology. ť 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.

History

The original orthography was developed in the early 19th century by missionaries from the Paris Evangelical Missionary Society to aid in translating the Bible. The earliest orthographies had an obvious French bias, which still appears in the writing of the approximants /j/ and /w/ in the modern Lesotho variant.

Lesotho versus South African writing

One issue which complicates the written language is 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	esotho version	xample
,	,	to lend
		peace
		type of bead string
		May month
		to burn
		air/wind/spirit
		to comprehend
		to be tied
		ostrich

Additionally, in older texts the nasalized click was written in Lesotho (as a relic of a much older click series:,, and ), but now the more universal digraph is used in both countries.
When the symbol "š" is unavailable electronically, people who write in Lesotho Sesotho often use ts' or t's to represent the aspirated alveolar affricate .
In word-initial positions, 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	esotho version
truth
and
vagina (very crude)
to scratch my itch

Note that, when not word-initial, Lesotho orthography uses an n or m just like South African orthography.
   When consonants or vowels are omitted due to (diachronic or synchronic) contractions, Lesotho orthography uses apostrophes to indicate the missing sounds while the South African orthography generally does not. ť I haven't seen her

    My child
   In order to distinguish between the concords of class 1(a) and the 2nd. person singular, Lesotho orthography (mis-)uses u to represent phonetic and for the 2nd. person, even when there's no chance of ambiguity. ť You are beautiful

    He/she is beautiful ť I did advise you too

    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. ť to pour — to cross

    to sing a praise poem — to sew These examples also have differing tone patterns.
   Although the two orthographies tend to use similar written word divisions, they do differ on some points:

More often than not compounds that are written as one word in South African Sesotho will be written with dashes in Lesotho Sesotho ť leader
The prosodic penultimate that's sometimes affixed to monosyllabic verbs is written with a dash in Lesotho ť be!
The "focus marker" is inserted between the subject concord and the verb stem in different ways in the two orthographies. This is probably the most commonly encountered difference between the word divisions of the two orthographies ť The cows are grazing
The class 2a prefix is usually simply attached to the class 1a noun in South Africa but Lesotho orthography uses a dash ť father ⇒ fathers/father-and-them

Very often South Africans with recent ancestors from Lesotho have surnames written in Lesotho orthography, preserving the old spellings. ť Gloria Moshoeshoe, South African actor and talk show host

Aaron Mokoena, South African and European soccer player

Word division

Like all other Bantu languages Sesotho is an agglutinative language spoken conjunctively; however, like many Bantu languages it's 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. Roughly speaking the following principles may be used to explain the current orthographical word division:

Prefixes (except noun class prefixes) and infixes are written separately on their own, and the root and all following suffixes are written together. This is most obvious in the writing of the verb complex. One exception is the 1st. pers. sg objectival concord, and another is in the writing of the concords used with the qualificative parts of speech.
With the exception of class 15, noun class prefixes are directly attached to the noun stem. These are an essential part of the lexicon, and not merely functional morphemes.
Words which have been fossilised/lexicalised with historical prefixes are written as one word. This most frequently occurs with adverbs. Of course, there are exceptions to these rough rules.

Punctuation

Modern Sesotho punctuation essentially mimics popular English usage. Full stops separate sentences, with the first letter of each sentence capitalized; commas indicate slight pauses; direct quotes are indicated with double quotation marks; proper nouns have their first letter capitalized (this was often not done in the old French-based orthographies); and so forth.
Direct quotations are introduced with a comma followed by the utterance in double quotes. The comma is used to indicate the pause which is mandatory in speech when introducing quotes, and indeed, in older orthographies the quotes were not used at all since the pause by itself is sufficient to introduce the next phrase as a quotation. ť He said, "I wish to speak with you."

Proper nouns are indicated by capitalizing the first letter (usually the first letter of the noun prefix). Since prefixes are written separately from the main noun in the disjunctive orthography, they're not written differently. Contrast this with the situation in the disjunctively-written Nguni languages where it's the first letter of the stem that's capitalized. ť The Voice of the People (isiZulu iZwi labaNtu)

Limitations

Although it's a sufficient medium which has been used for almost 200 years to pen some of the most celebrated African literature (such as Thomas Mofolo's Chaka), the current Sesotho orthography does exhibit certain (phonological) deficiencies.
   One problem is that, although the spoken language has at least seven contrasting vowel phonemes, these are only written using the five vowel letters of the standard Latin alphabet. The letter "e" represents the vowels /ɪ/, /ɛ/, and /e/, and the letter "o" represents the vowels /ʊ/, /ɔ/, and /o/. Not only does this result in numerous homographs, there's also some overlap between many distinct morphemes and formatives, as well as the final vowels of Sesotho verbs in various tenses and moods.
   Another problem is the complete lack of tone marking even though Sesotho is a grammatical tone language. Not only does this also result in numerous homographs, it may also cause problems in situations where the only difference between grammatical constructions is the tones of a few key syllables in two otherwise similar sounding phrases. That this would be a rather difficult issue to tackle is revealed by the fact that very few of the large number of written Niger-Congo languages have any consistently used tone marking schemes, even though some of their tonal systems are much more complex than that of Sesotho.
   The following not too unlikely example is illustrative of both these issues: ť ke ye ke reke dijo, either [kʼɪje  kʼɪʀekʼɪ  diʒɔ] [_ _ _ ¯ ¯ _ ¯ ] I often buy food, or [kʼɪjɛ  kʼɪʀɛkʼɛ  diʒɔ] [¯ _ ¯ ¯ ¯ _ ¯ ] so I may go and buy food

The first meaning is rendered if the phrase is composed of a Group III deficient verb (indicating habitual actions) followed by a verb in the perfect subjunctive mood. The second verb's mood is indicated by the low toned subjectival concord as well as the /ɪ/ final vowel. The second meaning is rendered by basically using two normal verbs in the subjunctive mood (with high toned subjectival concords and /ɛ/ final vowels) with the actions following each other.

Summary of Orthography

Orthography	IPA	Notes	Example
a	[[openback unrounded vowel	Like English spa	ho abela to distribute
b	[[voiced bilabial plosive	this consonant is fully voiced	lebese milk
bj	/bʒ/		ho bjarana to break apart like a clay pot
bj	/bj/	?
d	[d]	an allophone of /l/ only occurring before the close vowels (/i/and /u/)	Modimo God
e	[[near-closenear-front unrounded vowel	Like English pit	ho leka to attempt
	[[close-mid front unrounded vowel	Like English cafe	ho jwetsa to tell
	[[open-mid front unrounded vowel	Like English bed	ho sheba to look
f	[[voiceless labiodental fricative		ho fumiana to find
fj	/fʃ/	only found in short passives of verbs ending with fa; alternative sh	ho bofjwa to be tied
h	[[voiceless glottal fricative or [[voiced glottal fricative	these two sounds are allophones	ho aha to build
hl	[[voiceless alveolar lateral fricative		ho hlahloba to examine
i	[[close front rounded vowel	As in English beet	tho bitsa to call
j	[[voiced postalveolar fricative		mo jlefa heir
j	[[voiced postalveolar affricate	this is an alternative to the fricative /ʒ/	ho ja to eat
k	[[velar ejective	unaspirated: skill	boikarabelo responsibility
kh	[[voiceless velar plosive	fully aspirated: kill; occurring mostly in old loanwords from Nguni languages and in ideophones	lekhokho the part of the pap that remains baked to the pot after cooking
kg	[[voiceless velar fricative		sekgo spider
kg	[[voiceless velar affricate	alternative to the velar fricative	kgale a long time ago
l	[[alveolar lateral approximant	never occurs before close vowels (/i/ and /u/), where it becomes [d]	selepe axe
m	[[bilabialnasal		ho mamaretsa to glue
n	[[alveolar nasal		lenaneo
ng	[[velar nasal	can occur initially	lengolo letter
ny	[[palatal nasal	as in Spanish el niño	ho nyala to marry
o	[[near-close near-back rounded vowel	like English put	potso query
	[[close-mid back rounded vowel	As in French oiseau	pontsho proof
	[[open-mid back rounded vowel	English: board	mongolo writing
p	[[bilabial ejective	unaspirated: spit	pitsa cooking pot
ph	[[voiceless bilabial plosive	aspirated: pin	phuputso investigation
pj	/pʃʼ/	alternative tj	ho pjatla to cook well
pjh	/pʃʰ/	aspirated version of the above; alternative tjh	mpjhe ostrich
q	[[postalveolar click	radical	ho qoqa to chat
qh	[[postalveolar click	aspirated	leqheku an elderly person
nq	[[postalveolar click	nasal; this is often simply pronounced as a radical click	ho nqosa to accuse
r	[[uvular trill	soft Parisian-type r	moriri hair
s	[[voiceless alveolar fricative		Sesotho
sh	[[voiceless postalveolar fricative		Moshweshwe Moshoeshoe I
t	[[alveolar ejective	unaspirated: stalk	botala greenness
th	[[voiceless alveolar plosive		tharollo solution
tj	[[voiceless postalveolar affricate		ntja dog
tjh	[[voiceless postalveolar affricate		ho ntjhafatsa to renew
tl	[[voiceless alveolar lateral affricate		ho tlatsa to fill
tlh	[[voiceless alveolar lateral affricate	occurs only as a nasalized form of hl or as an alternative to it[3]	*tlh*aho nature
ts	[[voiceless alveolar affricate		ho tsokotsa to rinse
tsh	[[voiceless alveolar affricate	aspirated	ho tshoha to become frightened
u	[[close back unrounded vowel	As in English boot	tumo fame
w	[[voiced labial-velar approximant		sewa epidemic
y	[[palatal approximant		ho tsamaya to walk

Further Information

Get more info on 'Sesotho Orthography'.

External Link Exchanges

Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:

<a href="http://sesotho_orthography.totallyexplained.com">Sesotho orthography Totally Explained</a>

Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned.