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Ditema tsa Dinoko (Sesotho for "Ditema syllabary"), also known as ditema tsa Sesotho, is a constructed writing system (specifically, a featural syllabary) for the siNtu or Southern Bantu languages (such as Sesotho, Setswana, IsiZulu, IsiXhosa, SiSwati, SiPhuthi, Xitsonga, EMakhuwa, ChiNgoni, SiLozi, ChiShona and Tshivenḓa).
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 .
The Sotho language is spoken conjunctively yet written disjunctively (that is, the spoken phonological words are not the same as the written orthographical words). [7] In the following discussion, the natural conjunctive word division will be indicated by joining the disjunctive elements with the symbol • in the Sesotho and the English ...
Tsotsi is a Sesotho, Pedi or Tswana slang word for a "thug" or "robber" or "criminal", possibly from the verb "ho lotsa" "to sharpen", whose meaning has been modified in modern times to include "to con"; or from the tsetse fly, as the language was first known as Flytaal, although flaai also means "cool" or "street smart".
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.
Many Sesotho nouns (and other parts of speech) stem from contact with speakers of Indo-European languages, primarily French missionaries, Orange Free State Afrikaners, and, in modern times, English people. The very alien phonetics and phonologies of these languages mean that words are to be imported rather irregularly with varying phonetic ...
The difference lies in the characteristically European word division used for writing the language, in contrast with some Bantu languages such as the South African Nguni languages. This issue is investigated in more detail in The Sesotho word. Roughly speaking the following principles may be used to explain the current orthographical word division:
Probably the most radical sound innovation in the Sotho–Tswana languages is that the Proto-Bantu prenasalized consonants have become simple stops and affricates. [2] Thus isiZulu words such as entabeni ('on the mountain'), impuphu ('flour'), ezinkulu ('the big ones'), ukulanda ('to fetch'), ukulamba ('to become hungry'), and ukuthenga ('to buy') are cognates to Sesotho [tʰɑbeŋ̩] thabeng ...