Talk:Sotho language

Sesotho

Language name

There appears to be disagreement about how to call the language in this article. SimonDonnelly considers Sotho to be the standard appellation, while Joziboy and Zyxoas advocate Sesotho, because 'all the names in this article are in SA English'. In the history of the article, quite a few reverts back and forth can be found so maybe Simon unwittingly opened a can of worms when he changed it to Sotho with the edit summary 'Language appellation standardised'. This was reverted some two weeks later by Zyxoas with the edit summary 'Fixed language names, again'.

I'm starting a discussion here to see if we can gather consensus one way or the other, and to avoid turning this relatively minor issue into a petty revert war. Now, the basics: this edition of Wikipedia is international in scope. Therefore, article titles should use the most common term. However, in this case this is not a simple issue. Scholarly literature on the language for example seems to be about evenly divided between Sesotho and Sotho, and that's not simply a reflection of the South-African/rest of the world divide:

• Louwrens, Louis J. and Ingeborg M. Kosch (1995) Northern Sotho. München: LINCOM Europa.
• Lombard, D.P. and Wyk, E.B. van (1985) Introduction to the grammar of Northern Sotho. Pretoria: Van Schaik.
• Kunene, Daniel P. (1978) The ideophone in Southern Sotho. Berlin: Reimer.
• Demuth, Katherine A. (1983) Aspects of Sesotho language acquisition (Lesotho). Ann Arbor: UMI. Dissertation, Bloomington.
• Khoali, Benjamin Thakampholo (1991) 'A Sesotho tonal grammar', Ann Arbor: UMI. Dissertation.
• Alverson, Hoyt (1994) Semantics and experience : universal metaphors of time in English, Mandarin, Hindi, and Sesotho. Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press.

So I honestly don't know what the best solution is and I want to gather thoughts from others. — mark ✎ 10:22, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

Hello, fellow readers and editors! Here's my 2c worth...

Every field — including in this case African Linguistics (or African Language Studies) — has analytic and other scholarly issues to be addressed. Some are truly important issues, e.g. whether two "dialects" can be considered independent languages or a single language. Thus: Xhosa and Zulu are standardly claimed to be separate languages, with good socio-political and historical reasons, but are linguistically very close dialects of each other (much closer than some dialects of English are to each other, and than many dialects of German are to each other). Every field also seems to acquire along the way less central issues, but which nevertheless become "issues" for various reasons. I would suggest, along with perhaps most scholars in this field, that the Bantu naming issue is truly not a central issue. But it seems to have become one.

Since the Bantu languages have an extremely rich prefix system, and every noun must grammatically belong to a particular noun class category, the noun prefixes (e.g. se- of 'Sesotho') are obligatory. But they are only used when speaking (or writing) that particular language. When I speak Italian, I say "italiano" for the language or "un italiano" for a speaker of the language, and "italiani" or "gli italiani" for the speakers, when they are numerous. But I would be considered crazy to say in English: "I think gli italiani are great people". You might say I was just being really pretentious at showing you how well I know Italian. The normal way to say this would be "I think the Italians are great people". 'Italians' is what is used to designate the people who speak Italian when I am speaking English.

So, when I speak Sotho, I say Ke a se rata haholo Sesotho "I like Sotho (i.e. the Sotho language) a lot". But only if I were trying to be pretentious would I say "I like the Sesotho language a lot". You might conclude (rightly!) that I was just showing off. It gets worse. If I want to really show off, I can say that "I know a Mosotho--in fact, I know many Basotho who speak Sesotho in Lesotho to confirm their feeling of Bosotho, but who also speak English in South Africa". So, I can use the "Sotho" stem with at least five different prefixes. What have I gained, other than trying to show off? And if I come from South Africa, I should learn at least five (sometimes more) prefixes in each of the nine official African languages...

It gets worse. When you would like to look up the name of a language in the Bantu family in a print index, you need to now know not only the stem letter "s-" for Sotho, but also all the possible prefix letters ("se-", "le-", "mo-", "ba-", "bo-"). This is obviously not practical.

I would say that, on Wikipedia, if possible, one should use simply the name of the language, as has been done in the Linguistic literature on Bantu languages for more than a century (sometimes two or more centuries), that is: "Zulu", "Shona", "Sotho", "Swahili", "Rwanda"... The isi-/chi-/se-/ki-/kinya- prefixes for each of these languages, respectively, is a kind of 'distractor' issue. By the reasoning of those inclined to use Bantu prefixes in English, we should only speak of "IsiZulu", "Chishona", "Sesotho", "Kiswahili", "Kinyarwanda". Each of the prefix variations given is of the same noun class: Class 7. But to know which version you should use, you need to first know the language in question... This seems a very tall order.

Some writers and scholars do use all these prefixes, but it's very energy-consuming (for the writer, and for the reader)! Partly it's just really hard to keep up, and partly it's grammatically incoherent. Lots and lots and lots of energy gets spent on sorting out prefixes, when in English this is not really helpful, and ultimately not really interesting (from a linguistic point of view).

Finally, when I speak Sotho, I really don't expect a Sotho-speaking person to say *"The English ba bua English" ("respecting" the names that English-speakers use in English), instead of the normal "Makgowa a bua Sekgowa" (or "Majatlhapi a bua Sejatlhapi" :-). It would be unreasonable of me to expect this.

There are major issues to be addressed (like the massive shortage of documented information about most of the languages in the Bantu family!). I hope we can direct our energies that way...

— NguniTraveller 23:37, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

First, I absolutely agree with the point that this is a minor issue, and that our energy is better spent on expanding the articles in this area. I merely started a discussion here because I noticed that Zyxoas and you were silently reverting each other (all in good faith, I'm sure), and because the going back and forth without discussion didn't seem to be particularly productive.

Secondly, I'm well aware that the discussion is about having the noun class prefix or not (similar debates have surfaced repeatedly in other places, see for example Talk:Swahili_language#Ki- and Talk:African_languages#Style_for_African_language_names), and I fully agree that the normal English name of the language would be Sotho (which is why I lean towards using Sotho myself). The issue here, however, seems to be whether that holds for South African English too. I don't know; I believe Joziboy said that it does in an edit summary some time ago, but I'd like to see sources. — mark ✎ 12:43, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, Mark, for picking up the inadvertent mutual corrections of the Sotho name. You're right: it's not necessarily productive without a conversation. I hadn't followed the other Wiki conversations, but having read them now, they seem roughly to head in the same direction as the standard prefixlessness I'm suggesting we not be change.

SA English is in a certain amount of flux, in general, at levels of lexicon and especially phonetic (and even phonological) choices for English words in the new South Africa. There are so many SA Englishes (at least six broad types, and several areal variations) that it's hard to know what to do in some cases. But the stylistic choice of language-names-without-prefixes was made a long time back. It's true that there have been changes occasionally in the public forum by some speakers/writers (to the language names under discussion). But in general, the straightforward prefixless version remains optimal. I'd say the revisionist 'prefix-ful' approach to naming Bantu languages, even though well-intended, will not buy Wiki readers/writers any mileage.

Exception: I think the point on Talk:African_languages#Style_for_African_language_names about languages that have always been used with prefixes — perhaps including Chichewa, Kikongo (to disambiguate with the other Kongo languages) — is a very reasonable position to adopt. I think this exception status does not apply to Sotho (or *Sesotho), nor to any of the languages in South Africa. None has a 'prefix-ful' tradition in the two centuries preceding the present.

NguniTraveller 20:36, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

Well said. However, I think that it's been well said for far too long. When can we actually begin implementing the language appellation standard? Is it safe to say that we have a general consensus? — D. Wo. 21:46, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

Based on the discussion at Talk:African languages it seems we have a general consensus, yes. By the way, this language appellation standard has been implemented for at least two years here, it's just that there are sometimes individual cases of disagreement. — mark ✎ 08:29, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

No, no consensus.

Sorry I haven't been around to deal with this, again. Please see Template talk:Languages of South Africa.

Firstly, "appellation" is not, as far as I am aware, a standard English word for the simpler "name". My South African Oxford English Dictionary does have it, and it also says that eg. "Zulu" is "...2 another term for isiZulu..." ("-- ORIGIN from isiZulu umZulu").

Nguni, you do not need to know the entire language to use the prefixes -- just use the name. In fact, no one knows what the root "-sotho" means at all (unlike "-kgowa" (an extinct ideophone of whiteness) and "-jatlhapi" (since eating fish is traditionally taboo ;) )) -- there's no need for a layperson to analyse it at all.

Your editions to the number table were wrong. I meant it as a table of numerals, not formative roots. In Sesotho (unlike Setswana), the root for 1 is the enumerative "-ng". 6 to 10 are relatives in all the languages (no "-").

Zyxoas (talk to me - I'll listen) 13:16, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

With all due respect Zyxoas, but if I understand you well your argument is that your SA OED says that one can use both Zulu and isiZulu. That isn't exactly convincing. Besides, I'm still not sure if we should go with SA English here or with International English (this seems to be very much an open issue).

Your comment on 'appellation' vs. 'name' didn't seem relevant at first but in fact it is quite illustrative of the point here. To borrow your phrasing, Sesotho is not, as far as I am aware, a standard English word for the simpler "Sotho". What do you think of that argumentation? — mark ✎ 22:38, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Responding to the feedback from ZyXoas above, the reader will note I did not write what ZyXoas attributed to me, about needing to know the entire language. I did write: "But to know which version [of the Class 7 prefix] you should use, you need to first know the language in question...".

My point was simply that you can't know what the "real" name of Venda is, for example, until you know what the Class 7 noun prefix is in Venda (Yep, I've just seen the discussion on Venda at Template_talk:Languages_of_South_Africa as well, but it's incomplete. And yes, Venda is the only standard name for the language used by speakers of Venda when they speak in English about their own language).

The only way to know that Venda is "really" Tshivenda is to in fact know Venda. You can't guess — is it *Kivenda? *Sevenda? *Sivenda? *Isivenda? Etc. No, it's Tshivenda. You'd need to know that the Class 7 prefix shape in Venda is tshi-. Actually that's not fully right either. You'd need to know that Venda exceptionally allows its Class 11 prefix lu- to double for the language name (well, I'd prefer "language appellation" -- which is just a high-register word for the same thing. Touché! :-)).

So, you'd need to know two prefixes in Venda to get the name "right". In fact, that still ain't quite right. You'd need a little underscore caret under the 'd' to indicate (contrastive) dentality.

Wait, in fact, that's not quite right either: you'd need the tone marks on the syllables (high or low or falling, and they are contrastive in many instances, so this is phonologically contentful information, not just faffing with phonetic detail). Same goes for "Sesotho", and all other language names in Bantu, because the vast majority of languages are tonal (the standard dialect of Swahili is a notable exception). In other words, once one has started down the road of increasing accuracy with respect to the language's auto-appellation, it can turn out to be a long road... Eish. Point made.

Listen, if people REALLY really really wish to use {prefix+stem} names for a Bantu language, including Sesotho, well, ok. It's just a heck of a lot of energy, if one is going to be consistent with all languages in the region (or worse: in the whole family of 500 languages!), that's all. I bet any single reader here to write out from memory (no cheating!) a list of all nine African languages which are standard in South Africa, with the relevant people (speaker) [Class 1,2 or 1a,2a/b], place [Class 17], abstract quality [Class 14], and language/culture name [Class 7/11] prefixes... I doubt that many people on the planet could get this right. Why expend all this energy, instead of simply using the language stem like scholars have done for two hundred years? But, I leave this to the larger forum. I submit humbly that it's not worth expending too much more energy on the topic.

Yes, Mark, based on Talk:African languages, there seems to be rough agreement on the (already) standard format. Based on Template_talk:Languages_of_South_Africa, sifting in among all sort of distractor discussions, nothing seems to supersede the present conversation, nor the Talk:African languages one. I'm not going to go changing language page names, but it seems lopsided to have Xhosa language, Zulu language, Venda language, but Sesotho language. Ok, signing off on this now.

NguniTraveller 00:26, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

My vote is for Sesotho. My reason is that I lived in Lesotho for two years and learned to speak Sesotho. I did not live is Sotho with Sotho people and speak Sotho. I lived with Basotho in Lesotho and spoke Sesotho. Jeff.t.mcdonald 16:15, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Jeff. I am a native SeSotho speaker (decendent of first and third generation immigrants) and it's proper to refer to the language as Sesotho. Prefixes play a major role in indicating respect in this language. It is kinda stupid naming the article 'Sotho language' because there is no such word as 'Sotho' in SeSotho. The word Sesotho directly refers to the language itself and sounds proper. When the word is said in spoken form it is used as a contraction (contractions are often used in Sesotho e.g. "Mmae wa mo batla" is short for "Mme wa hae o wa mo batla" 'Her mother is looking for her'). The title is not formal and sounds disrespectful. Fruitandnut (talk) 00:37, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

Yes, the name of the language is Sesotho in Sotho. However, this is the English Wikipedia, and the term is Sotho, just like the language is "French" in English, not Francais. This has been discussed countless times, please read the history. Greenman (talk) 16:28, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

Hi everyone; I just saw this discussion (though almost a decade late :) ) thanks to Dwo; when I "corrected" the name of my native tongue on here I had no idea there was such a fierce war going on about it. I read through all the comments/suggestions/questions above and I'm thrilled that many people (non-native speakers included) care enough about my language to help document. I do realise though, that there really is no consensus for either side of the argument; as a native speaker I naturally do support the correct naming of the language: "Sesotho"; as much as arguments for "Sotho" are detailed and clear, there is a little flaw - anglicization; African languages generally seem to fall prey to this by European languages/English speaking enthusiasts/linguists; as we're all aware, '-sotho' is not even a noun for Pete's sake, the example cited to support the incorrect renaming, "Italian", serves to show how incorrect naming this language "Sotho" is; -sotho is a suffix, is "Italian" a suffix too? All "anglicized versions" of African languages (those I've seen, many) have taken this form; not only is this incorrect, it's disrespectful too! Funny enough there's supposedly a "consensus" to use the incorrect "Sotho" as the name of the language, I'm sorry I don't see any consensus, besides, how many of us here even speak the language? I'd expect a native speaker of a language to know more/better about it, no disrespect to all the linguists whose input is also valuable, but there is no consensus. Please see this incomplete list of Sesotho publications. Documenting and standardizing African languages is very good and beneficial for their preservation, thanks to everyone that's been lending a hand to that noble cause; anglicizing them on the other hand taints the very good act. "Sesotho" is the name of the language. Let's please respect and treat all languages equally.

— Mohahlaula (talk) 00:15, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

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