[[File:South Africa Tswana speakers proportion map.svg|thumb|Geographical distribution of Setswana in South Africa: proportion of the population that speaks Setswana at home.
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[[File:South Africa Tswana speakers density map.svg|thumb|Geographical distribution of Setswana in South Africa: density of Setswana home-language speakers.
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Tswana, also known by its native name Setswana, is a Bantu language indigenous to Southern Africa and spoken by about 8.2 million people.[ It is closely related to the Northern Sotho and Sotho language languages, as well as the Kgalagadi language and the Lozi language.]
Setswana is an official language of South Africa and Zimbabwe. It is a lingua franca in Botswana and parts of South Africa, particularly North West Province. Tswana speaking ethnic groups are found in more than two provinces of South Africa, primarily in the North West, where about four million people speak the language. An urbanised variety is known as Pretoria Sotho, and is the principal unique language of the city of Pretoria. The three South African provinces with the most speakers are Gauteng (circa 11%), Northern Cape, and North West (over 70%). Until 1994, South African Tswana people were notionally citizens of Bophuthatswana, one of the of the apartheid regime. The Setswana language in the Northwest Province has variations in which it is spoken according to the ethnic groups found in the Tswana culture (Bakgatla, Barolong, Bakwena, Batlhaping, Bahurutshe, Bafokeng, Batlokwa, Bataung, and Batswapong, among others); the written language remains the same. A small number of speakers are also found in Zimbabwe (unknown number) and Namibia (about 10,000 people).
History
The first European to describe the language was the Germans Hinrich Lichtenstein, who lived among the Tswana people Batlhaping tribe in 1806 although his work was not published until 1930. He mistakenly regarded Tswana as a dialect of the Xhosa language, and the name that he used for the language "Beetjuana" may also have covered the Northern and Sotho language.
The first major work on Tswana was carried out by the British missionary Robert Moffat, who had also lived among the Batlhaping tribe, 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 Tswana 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. He changed his mind later, and in a publication from 1882, he noted that the Northern and Southern Sotho languages were distinct from Tswana.
Sol Plaatje, a South African intellectual and linguist, was one of the first writers to extensively write in and about the Tswana language.
Phonology
Vowels
The vowel of Tswana can be seen below.
Some dialects have two additional vowels, the and .
Consonants
The consonant of Tswana can be seen below.
The consonant is merely an allophone of , when the latter is followed by the or .
Tswana also has three , but these are only used in 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 , orthographically ; the lateral click , orthographically ; and the alveolar click , orthographically .
There are some minor dialect among the consonants between speakers of Tswana. For instance, is realised as either or by many speakers; is realised as in most dialects; and and are realised as and in northern dialects.
The consonant can exist at the end of a word without being followed by a vowel (as in Jwaneng and Barolong Seboni).
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. The syllable on which the stress falls is lengthened. Thus, woman (woman) is realised as .
Tone
Tswana has two tones, high and low, but the latter has a much wider distribution in words than the former. Tones are not marked orthography, which may lead to ambiguity.
- go bua "to speak"
- go bua "to skin an animal"
- o bua Setswana "He speaks Setswana"
- o bua Setswana "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 have high tones unless they are at the end of the word.
- simolola > "to begin"
- simologêla > "to begin for/at"
Orthography
Tswana orthography is based on the Latin alphabet.
The letter š was introduced in 1937, but the corresponding sound is still sometimes written as ⟨sh⟩. The letters ⟨ê⟩ and ⟨ô⟩ are used in textbooks and language reference books, but not so much in daily standard writing.
Grammar
Nouns
in Tswana are grouped into nine and one subclass, each having different . The nine classes and their respective prefixes can be seen below, along with a short note regarding the common characteristics of most nouns within their respective classes.
Some nouns may be found in several classes. For instance, many class 1 nouns are also found in class 1a, class 3, class 4, and class 5.
Further reading
Notes
Citations
Bibliography
External links
