HOME
*





Sesotho Orthography
The orthography of the Sotho language is fairly recent and is based on the Latin script, but, like most languages written using the Latin alphabet, it does not use all the letters; as well, several digraphs and trigraphs are used to represent single sounds. The orthographies used in Lesotho and South Africa 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 Sotho phonology. :''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 were more like French spelling, ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


South Africa
South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the north by the neighbouring countries of Namibia, Botswana, and Zimbabwe; and to the east and northeast by Mozambique and Eswatini. It also completely enclaves the country Lesotho. It is the southernmost country on the mainland of the Old World, and the second-most populous country located entirely south of the equator, after Tanzania. South Africa is a biodiversity hotspot, with unique biomes, plant and animal life. With over 60 million people, the country is the world's 24th-most populous nation and covers an area of . South Africa has three capital cities, with the executive, judicial and legislative branches of government based in Pretoria, Bloemfontein, and Cape Town respectively. The largest city is Johannesburg. About 80% of the population are Black Sou ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Aaron Mokoena
Teboho Aaron Mokoena (born 25 November 1980), known as Aaron Mokoena, is a South African former association football, footballer. He is currently the assistant coach of Cape Town City F.C. (2016), Cape Town City. Club career Early career Mokoena was born in Boipatong. He moved to Bayer 04 Leverkusen, Bayer Leverkusen and AFC Ajax, Ajax, before twice being loaned out to K.F.C. Germinal Beerschot, Germinal Beerschot and then transferring to K.R.C. Genk, KRC Genk for two years. On 4 January 2005, aged 24 he moved to Premier League side Blackburn Rovers F.C., Blackburn Rovers in which he described his move as a dream. Blackburn Rovers Mokoena made his debut for Blackburn Rovers F.C., Blackburn on 8 January 2005 in an FA Cup match against Cardiff City F.C., Cardiff City, coming on as a 43rd-minute substitute for Barry Ferguson. After this, Mark Hughes mainly utilised Mokoena as a holding midfielder. Mokoena went on to be a regular in the starting line-up for the remainder of the sea ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Niger–Congo Languages
Niger–Congo is a hypothetical language family spoken over the majority of sub-Saharan Africa. It unites the Mande languages, the Atlantic–Congo languages, Atlantic-Congo languages (which share a characteristic noun class system), and possibly several smaller groups of languages that are difficult to classify. If valid, Niger-Congo would be the world's largest in terms of member languages, the third-largest in terms of speakers, and Languages of Africa, Africa's largest in terms of geographical area.Irene Thompson"Niger-Congo Language Family" "aboutworldlanguages", March 2015 It is generally considered to be the world's largest language family in terms of the number of distinct languages, just ahead of Austronesian languages, Austronesian, although this is complicated by the Dialect#Dialect or language, ambiguity about what constitutes a distinct language; the number of named Niger–Congo languages listed by ''Ethnologue'' is 1,540. If valid, it would be the third-largest lang ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  




Sesotho Verbs
Sesotho verbs are words in the language that signify the action or state of a substantive, and are brought into agreement with it using the subjectival concord. This definition excludes imperatives and infinitives, which are respectively interjectives and class 14 nouns. In the Bantu languages, verbs often form the centre of a complex web of regular derivational patterns, and words/roots belonging to many parts of speech may be directly or indirectly derived from them. Not only may new verbs be derived using a large number of derivational suffixes, nouns (and, iteratively, the other parts of speech that derive from them), some imperative interjectives and, to a lesser extent, ideophones may be formed by simple morphological devices. Varieties Verb stems may be divided into four varieties: #Regular stems beginning with a consonant and ending in a vowel #Monosyllabic verbs #Vowel verb stems begin with a vowel #Derived verbs constructed from other verbs, noun roots, adjectival ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Morphemes
A morpheme is the smallest meaningful constituent of a linguistic expression. The field of linguistic study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology. In English, morphemes are often but not necessarily words. Morphemes that stand alone are considered roots (such as the morpheme ''cat''); other morphemes, called affixes, are found only in combination with other morphemes. For example, the ''-s'' in ''cats'' indicates the concept of plurality but is always bound to another concept to indicate a specific kind of plurality. This distinction is not universal and does not apply to, for example, Latin, in which many roots cannot stand alone. For instance, the Latin root ''reg-'' (‘king’) must always be suffixed with a case marker: ''rex'' (''reg-s''), ''reg-is'', ''reg-i'', etc. For a language like Latin, a root can be defined as the main lexical morpheme of a word. These sample English words have the following morphological analyses: * "Unbreakable" is composed of three mo ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Homograph
A homograph (from the el, ὁμός, ''homós'', "same" and γράφω, ''gráphō'', "write") is a word that shares the same written form as another word but has a different meaning. However, some dictionaries insist that the words must also be pronounced differently, while the Oxford English Dictionary says that the words should also be of "different origin". In this vein, ''The Oxford Guide to Practical Lexicography'' lists various types of homographs, including those in which the words are discriminated by being in a different ''word class'', such as ''hit'', the verb ''to strike'', and ''hit'', the noun ''a blow''. If, when spoken, the meanings may be distinguished by different pronunciations, the words are also heteronyms. Words with the same writing ''and'' pronunciation (i.e. are both homographs and homophones) are considered homonyms. However, in a looser sense the term "homonym" may be applied to words with the same writing ''or'' pronunciation. Homograph disambigua ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Phonemes
In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language. For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-west of England, the sound patterns (''sin'') and (''sing'') are two separate words that are distinguished by the substitution of one phoneme, , for another phoneme, . Two words like this that differ in meaning through the contrast of a single phoneme form a '' minimal pair''. If, in another language, any two sequences differing only by pronunciation of the final sounds or are perceived as being the same in meaning, then these two sounds are interpreted as phonetic variants of a single phoneme in that language. Phonemes that are established by the use of minimal pairs, such as ''tap'' vs ''tab'' or ''pat'' vs ''bat'', are written between slashes: , . To show pronunciation, linguists use square brackets: (indicating an aspirated ''p'' ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Chaka (novel)
''Chaka'' is the third and final novel by Mosotho writer Thomas Mofolo. Written in Sesotho, it is a mythic fictional retelling of the story of the rise and fall of the Zulu emperor-king Shaka. Following its first publication in 1925, it was published in English translation in 1931. Publication history ''Chaka'' was written in three years, from 1907 to 1910. To gather material for his novel, Thomas Mofolo made several trips to the South African province of Natal, including one in 1909 where he visited the grave of Shaka. The original Sotho manuscript was first submitted in 1910 to the Morija Sesuto Book Depot supported by the Paris Evangelical Missionary Society (PEMS), but was only published in 1925. The delay in publication was due to the publishers' being "disturbed by Mofolo's failure to condemn pagan tribal customs"; this led to a disheartened Mofolo's retirement from writing. According to translator Daniel P. Kunene, who translated ''Chaka'' from Sesotho to English, at leas ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Thomas Mofolo
Thomas Mokopu Mofolo (22 December 1876 – 8 September 1948) is considered the greatest Basotho author. He wrote mostly in the Sesotho language, but his most popular book, '' Chaka'', has been translated into English and other languages. Biography Thomas Mofolo was born in Khojane, Lesotho, on 22 December 1876. He was educated in the local schools of the Paris Evangelical Missionary Society and obtained a teacher's certificate in 1898. While he was working at the book depot in Morija, some of the missionaries encouraged him to write what was to become the first novel in Southern Sotho, ''Moeti oa bochabela'' (1907; The Traveler of the East). The edifying story of a young Sotho chieftain's conversion to Christianity, it is cleverly interwoven with traditional myths and praise poems. Its success prompted other young teachers to try their hand at fiction writing, thus launching one of the earliest literary movements in sub-Saharan Africa. Mofolo's next book, ''Pitseng'' (1910), is ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  




Sotho Parts Of Speech
The Sesotho parts of speech convey the most basic meanings and functions of the words in the language, which may be modified in largely predictable ways by affixes and other regular morphological devices. Each complete word in the Sesotho language must comprise some "part of speech." There are basically twelve parts of speech in Sesotho. The six major divisions are purely according to syntax, while the sub-divisions are according to morphology and semantic significance. As a rule, Bantu languages do not have any prepositionsSometimes a certain class of constructions are called "prepositions" in Sesotho, but this is merely a misunderstanding aggravated by the disjunctive Sesotho orthography. They are formed from adverbs of place by contracting the locative class' possessive concord (''ha-'') affixed to the following word into them (as evidenced by the fact that they all end with a high tone ''a'', and affect the tone of the following noun), and produce similar meanings to En ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Morpheme
A morpheme is the smallest meaningful constituent of a linguistic expression. The field of linguistic study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology. In English, morphemes are often but not necessarily words. Morphemes that stand alone are considered roots (such as the morpheme ''cat''); other morphemes, called affixes, are found only in combination with other morphemes. For example, the ''-s'' in ''cats'' indicates the concept of plurality but is always bound to another concept to indicate a specific kind of plurality. This distinction is not universal and does not apply to, for example, Latin, in which many roots cannot stand alone. For instance, the Latin root ''reg-'' (‘king’) must always be suffixed with a case marker: ''rex'' (''reg-s''), ''reg-is'', ''reg-i'', etc. For a language like Latin, a root can be defined as the main lexical morpheme of a word. These sample English words have the following morphological analyses: * "Unbreakable" is composed of three ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Sotho Concords
Just as the Sesotho sentence centres on the Sesotho noun, the noun is made to "concòrd" ("agree") with the verbs, pronouns, and qualificatives describing it by a set of Sesotho ''noun concords''. The noun concord system is the most striking feature of the Bantu language family. The exact number of concord types differs from language to language, and traces of this system (and the noun class system) are even found in some Niger–Congo languages outside the narrow Bantu family. Concord types There are seven basic sets of concords.The actual number cited may vary from author to author. Some authors prefer to separate the prefixes used to form the demonstrative pronouns from the relative concords (possibly due to the phonetic transformations). Other authors (particularly in entry-level learner texts) treat the "auxiliary concord" as distinct from the subjectival. Some other authors do not seem to recognise the enumeratives as a separate part of speech and as such do not include th ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]