Coordinates | 29°24′17″N50°52′35″N |
---|---|
Name | Setswana |
Nativename | Setswana |
States | |
Region | Southern Africa |
Speakers | 4,521,700 |
Familycolor | Niger-Congo |
Fam2 | Atlantic–Congo |
Fam3 | Benue–Congo |
Fam4 | Bantoid |
Fam5 | Southern Bantoid |
Fam6 | Bantu |
Fam7 | Southern Bantu |
Fam8 | Sotho–Tswana |
Nation | |
Iso1 | tn |
Iso2 | tsn |
Iso3 | tsn |
Notice | IPA}} |
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, 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.
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.
Front vowel>Front | Back vowel>Back | |
Close vowel>Close | ‹i› | ‹u› |
Near-close vowel>Near-close | ‹e› | ‹o› |
Open-mid vowel>Open-mid | ‹ê› | ‹ô› |
Open vowel>Open |
Some dialects have two additional vowels, the close-mid vowels and .
! rowspan="2" | ! colspan="2" | ! rowspan="2" | ! rowspan="2" | ! rowspan="2" | ! rowspan="2" | ! rowspan="2" | |||
Central consonant>Central | Lateral consonant>Lateral | ||||||||
! colspan="2" | ‹m› | ‹n› | ‹ny› | ‹ng› | |||||
! rowspan="2" | Tenuis consonant>Unaspirated | ‹p› ‹b› | ‹t› ‹d› | ‹k› | |||||
Aspiration (phonetics)>Aspirated | ‹ph› | ‹th› | ‹kh› | ‹kg› | |||||
! rowspan="2" | Tenuis consonant>Unaspirated | ‹ts› | ‹tl› | ‹tš› ‹j› | |||||
Aspiration (phonetics)>Aspirated | ‹tsh› | ‹tlh› | ‹tšh› | ||||||
! colspan="2" | ‹f› | ‹s› | ‹š› | ‹g› | ‹h› | ||||
! colspan="2" | ‹r› | ||||||||
! colspan="2" | ‹w› | ‹l› | ‹y› |
It should be noted that the consonant is merely an allophone of , when the latter is followed by the vowels or .
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 , orthographically ‹c›; the lateral click , orthographically ‹x›; and the palatal click , orthographically ‹q›.
There are some minor dialectal variations among the consonants between speakers of Tswana. For instance, is realized as either or by many speakers; is realized as in most dialects; and and are realized as and in northern dialects.
: 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 also get high tones, unless they are at the end of the word.
: simolola > "to begin" : simologêla > "to begin for/at"
! Class | ! Singular | ! Plural | ! Characteristics |
! 1. | mo- | bo- | |
! 1a. | - | bô- | |
! 2. | mo- | me-ma- | |
! 3. | le- | ma- | |
! 4. | se- | di- | |
! 5. | n-m-ny-ng- | ||
! 6. | lo- | ||
! 7. | bo- | ma- | |
! 8. | |||
! 9. |
It should be noted, however, that 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.
Category:Sotho-Tswana languages Category:Languages of Botswana Category:Languages of South Africa Category:Languages of Zimbabwe Category:Languages of Namibia Category:SVO languages Category:Tonal languages
af:Tswana ast:Tsuana br:Tswaneg bg:Тсвана ca:Tswana de:Setswana et:Tsvana keel el:Τσουάνα γλώσσα es:Setsuana eo:Cvana lingvo eu:Tswanera fr:Tswana ko:츠와나어 id:Bahasa Tswana it:Lingua tswana lt:Tsvanų kalba ms:Bahasa Setswana nah:Tzhuanatlahtōlli nl:Tswana (taal) ja:ツワナ語 no:Tswana nn:Setswana nov:Tswanum pms:Lenga Tswana pl:Język tswana pt:Língua tswana qu:Tswana simi ru:Тсвана (язык) tn:Setswana sq:Gjuha tsvana fi:Tswanan kieli sv:Setswana ta:சுவான மொழி tr:Tsvana dili uk:Сетсвана vi:Tiếng Tswana yo:Èdè Tswana zh:茨瓦纳语This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
The World News (WN) Network, has created this privacy statement in order to demonstrate our firm commitment to user privacy. The following discloses our information gathering and dissemination practices for wn.com, as well as e-mail newsletters.
We do not collect personally identifiable information about you, except when you provide it to us. For example, if you submit an inquiry to us or sign up for our newsletter, you may be asked to provide certain information such as your contact details (name, e-mail address, mailing address, etc.).
When you submit your personally identifiable information through wn.com, you are giving your consent to the collection, use and disclosure of your personal information as set forth in this Privacy Policy. If you would prefer that we not collect any personally identifiable information from you, please do not provide us with any such information. We will not sell or rent your personally identifiable information to third parties without your consent, except as otherwise disclosed in this Privacy Policy.
Except as otherwise disclosed in this Privacy Policy, we will use the information you provide us only for the purpose of responding to your inquiry or in connection with the service for which you provided such information. We may forward your contact information and inquiry to our affiliates and other divisions of our company that we feel can best address your inquiry or provide you with the requested service. We may also use the information you provide in aggregate form for internal business purposes, such as generating statistics and developing marketing plans. We may share or transfer such non-personally identifiable information with or to our affiliates, licensees, agents and partners.
We may retain other companies and individuals to perform functions on our behalf. Such third parties may be provided with access to personally identifiable information needed to perform their functions, but may not use such information for any other purpose.
In addition, we may disclose any information, including personally identifiable information, we deem necessary, in our sole discretion, to comply with any applicable law, regulation, legal proceeding or governmental request.
We do not want you to receive unwanted e-mail from us. We try to make it easy to opt-out of any service you have asked to receive. If you sign-up to our e-mail newsletters we do not sell, exchange or give your e-mail address to a third party.
E-mail addresses are collected via the wn.com web site. Users have to physically opt-in to receive the wn.com newsletter and a verification e-mail is sent. wn.com is clearly and conspicuously named at the point of
collection.If you no longer wish to receive our newsletter and promotional communications, you may opt-out of receiving them by following the instructions included in each newsletter or communication or by e-mailing us at michaelw(at)wn.com
The security of your personal information is important to us. We follow generally accepted industry standards to protect the personal information submitted to us, both during registration and once we receive it. No method of transmission over the Internet, or method of electronic storage, is 100 percent secure, however. Therefore, though we strive to use commercially acceptable means to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee its absolute security.
If we decide to change our e-mail practices, we will post those changes to this privacy statement, the homepage, and other places we think appropriate so that you are aware of what information we collect, how we use it, and under what circumstances, if any, we disclose it.
If we make material changes to our e-mail practices, we will notify you here, by e-mail, and by means of a notice on our home page.
The advertising banners and other forms of advertising appearing on this Web site are sometimes delivered to you, on our behalf, by a third party. In the course of serving advertisements to this site, the third party may place or recognize a unique cookie on your browser. For more information on cookies, you can visit www.cookiecentral.com.
As we continue to develop our business, we might sell certain aspects of our entities or assets. In such transactions, user information, including personally identifiable information, generally is one of the transferred business assets, and by submitting your personal information on Wn.com you agree that your data may be transferred to such parties in these circumstances.