Tswana language
A Bantu language official in Zimbabwe and South Africa.
Setswana, also known as Tswana, is a Bantu language indigenous to Southern Africa, spoken by about 8.2 million people. It is a lingua franca in Botswana and an official language of Zimbabwe and South Africa, with variations in spoken form across ethnic groups but a unified written standard.
- language_family
- Bantu
- speakers
- about 8.2 million
- official_status
- Official language of Zimbabwe and South Africa; lingua franca in Botswana
- related_languages
- Sepedi, Sesotho, Sekgaladi, likely Silozi
- writing_system
- Latin alphabet
Lore & Background
He mistakenly regarded Setswana as a dialect of isiXhosa.
Reader's Guide
French missionary E. South African intellectual Solomon Plaatje was among the first writers to extensively write in and about Setswana. The language has a fixed penultimate stress, two tones (high and low) that are not marked orthographically, and three click consonants used only in interjections or ideophones, falling out of use among younger speakers.
Did You Know?
- Setswana has three click consonants—dental, lateral, and alveolar—used only in interjections or ideophones, and they are falling out of use.
- The first European to describe Setswana, Hinrich Lichtenstein, mistakenly thought it was a dialect of isiXhosa.
- The consonant [d] is an allophone of /l/ when followed by the vowels /i/ or /u/.
- Stress in Setswana always falls on the penult of a word, lengthening that syllable.
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