Sotho-Tswana languages

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The Sotho-Tswana language group is a group of closely related Bantu languages spoken in Southern Africa, including Tswana (Setswana), Northern Sotho (Sesotho sa Leboa), Sotho (Southern Sotho or Sesotho), and Lozi (Silozi or Rozi).

The Sotho-Tswana group corresponds to the S.30 label in Guthrie's(1967-1971) classification[1] of languages in the Bantu family. As such, Sotho-Tswana includes a number of other language varieties which fall inside this approximate genetic subgrouping of southeastern Bantu. These include Lozi and numerous varieties of Northern Sotho.

Lozi, too, is a Sotho-Tswana language spoken in Zambia and northeastern Namibia (in the Caprivi). Lozi is much more distinct from the other Sotho-Tswana languages (than these others are internally from each other), due to heavy linguistic influences from Luyaana, and possibly other Zambian and Caprivi languages. In the Guthrie work—as is now widely acknowledged[2]—Lozi was misclassified as K.21.

Northern Sotho—which appears largely to be a taxonomic holding category for what is Sotho-Tswana but neither identifiably Southern Sotho nor Tswana[3]—subsumes highly varied language varieties (or 'dialects', in the neutral linguistic sense), including Pedi (Sepedi), Tswapo (Setswapo), Lovedu (Khilobedu), Pai and Pulana.

  1. ^ Guthrie, Malcolm (1967-1971). Comparative Bantu: An Introduction to the Comparative Linguistics and Prehistory of the Bantu Languages. (Volumes 1-4). Farnborough: Gregg International, cf. the CBOLD Guthrie name list
  2. ^ Gowlett, Derek. (2003). Zone S. In D. Nurse & G. Philippson (eds.), The Bantu Languages, 609-638. London: Curzon/Routledge
  3. ^ See Doke, Clement M. (1954). The Southern Bantu Languages. Handbook of African Languages. Oxford: Oxford University Press

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