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, still seen in the writing of the approximants and in the modern Lesotho variant.South African alphabet
Sesotho in South Africa uses the following alphabet:Lesotho versus South African writing
One issue which complicates the written language is the two divergent orthographies used by the two countries with the largest number of first language speakers. The Lesotho orthography is older than the South African one and differs from it not only in the choice of letters and the marking of initial syllabic nasals, but also (to a much lesser extent) in written word division and the use of diacritics on vowels to distinguish some ambiguous spellings. Additionally, in older texts the nasalized click was written in Lesotho (as a relic of a much older click series: , , and ), but now the more universal digraph is used in both countries. When the symbol "š" is unavailable electronically, people who write in Lesotho Sesotho often use ''ts or ''t's'' to represent the aspirated alveolar affricate . In word-initial positions,"Word" meaning the separately written elements in the disjunctive orthography — not proper Sesotho words. a syllabic nasal followed by a syllable starting with the same nasal is written as an ''n'' or ''m'' in South Africa but as an apostrophe in Lesotho. Note that, when not word-initial, Lesotho orthography uses an ''n'' or ''m'' just like South African orthography. When consonants or vowels are omitted due to (diachronic or synchronic) contractions, Lesotho orthography uses apostrophes to indicate the missing sounds while the South African orthography generally does not. : I haven't seen her : My child In order to distinguish between the concords of class 1(a) and the 2nd. person singular, Lesotho orthography uses ''u'' to represent phonetic and for the 2nd. person, even when there is no chance of ambiguity. : You are beautiful : He/she is beautiful : I did advise you too : I did advise him/her too In Lesotho, ''ò'' (for the two mid back vowels), ''ō'' (for the near-close back vowel), ''è'' (for the two mid front vowels), and ''ē'' (for the near-close front vowel) are sometimes used to avoid spelling ambiguities. This is never done in South African writing. : to pour — to cross : to sing a praise poem — to sew These examples also have differing tone patterns. Although the two orthographies tend to use similar written word divisions, they do differ on some points: # More often than not compounds that are written as one word in South African Sesotho will be written with dashes in Lesotho Sesotho #: leader #The prosodic penultimate that is sometimes affixed to monosyllabic verbs is written with a dash in Lesotho #: be! #The "focus marker" is inserted between the subject concord and the verb stem in different ways in the two orthographies. This is probably the most commonly encountered difference between the word divisions of the two orthographies #: The cows are grazing #The class 2a prefix is usually simply attached to the class 1a noun in South Africa but Lesotho orthography uses a dash #: father ⇒ fathers/father-and-them Very often South Africans with recent ancestors from Lesotho have surnames written in Lesotho orthography, preserving the old spellings. : Gloria Moshoeshoe, South African actor and talk show host : Aaron Mokoena, South African and European soccer playerWord division
Like all other Bantu languages, Sesotho is an agglutinative language spoken conjunctively; however, like many Bantu languages it is written disjunctively. The difference lies in the characteristically European word division used for writing the language, in contrast with some Bantu languages such as the South AfricanPunctuation
Modern Sesotho punctuation essentially mimics popular English usage. Full stops separate sentences, with the first letter of each sentence capitalized; commas indicate slight pauses; direct quotes are indicated with double quotation marks; proper nouns have their first letter capitalized (this was often not done in the old French-based orthographies); and so forth. Direct quotations are introduced with a comma followed by the utterance in double quotes. The comma is used to indicate the pause which is mandatory in speech when introducing quotes, and indeed, in older orthographies the quotes were not used at all since the pause by itself is sufficient to introduce the next phrase as a quotation. : He said, "I wish to speak with you." Proper nouns are indicated by capitalizing the first letter (usually the first letter of the noun prefix). Since prefixes are written separately from the main noun in the disjunctive orthography, they are not written differently. Contrast this with the situation in the disjunctively-written Nguni languages where it is the first letter of the ''stem'' that is capitalized. : The Voice of the People (isiZulu ''iZwi labaNtu'')Limitations
Although it is a sufficient medium which has been used for almost 200 years to pen some of the most celebrated African literature (such as Thomas Mofolo's ''Chaka''), the current Sesotho orthography does exhibit certain (phonological) deficiencies. One problem is that, although the spoken language has at least seven contrasting vowel phonemes, these are only written using the five vowel letters of the standard Latin alphabet. The letter "e" represents the vowels , , and , and the letter "o" represents the vowels , , and . Not only does this result in numerous homographs, there is also some overlap between many distinct morphemes and formatives, as well as the final vowels ofSee also
* Sotho brailleNotes
References
*Bird, S. 1998. ''Strategies for representing tone in African writing systems: A critical review''. {{DEFAULTSORT:Sotho Orthography Orthography Latin-script orthographies