Sepedi
Northern Sotho
Sesotho sa Leboa
Native to	South Africa
Region	Gauteng, Limpopo, Mpumalanga
Native speakers	4.7 million (2011 census)[1] 9.1 million L2 speakers (2002)[2]
Language family	Niger–Congo Atlantic–Congo Benue–Congo Southern Bantoid Bantu Southern Bantu Sotho–Tswana Sotho Sepedi
Dialects	Pedi Lobedu (Kgaga) Gananwa (Tlokwa) Kopa (Ndebele-Sotho) Birwa[3] Tswapong[3] ? Phalaborwa ? Kutswe (East Sotho) ? Pai (East Sotho) ? Pulana (East Sotho)
Writing system	Latin (Sotho alphabet) Sotho Braille
Signed forms	Signed Pedi
Official status
Official language in	South Africa
Regulated by	Pan South African Language Board
Language codes
ISO 639-2	nso
ISO 639-3	Variously: nso – Pedi etc. brl – Birwa two – Tswapong
Glottolog	nort3233  North Sotho + South Ndebele[4]
Guthrie code	S.32,301–304[3]
Linguasphere	parts of outer language 99-AUT-e (Sesotho-Setswana) 99-AUT-ea (Khelobedu) 99-AUT-eb (Thipulana) 99-AUT-ec (Khutswe) 99-AUT-ed (Sepedi), incl. 99-AUT-eab & -egh (southeast & northwest Tlokwa varieties)= transition to 99-AUT-eg (Setswana); 99-AUT-ff (Pai)= transition from 99-AUT-fg (isiZulu)

Geographical distribution of Northern Sesotho in South Africa: proportion of the population that speaks a form of Northern Sesotho at home. .mw-parser-output div.columns-2 div.column{float:left;width:50%;min-width:300px}.mw-parser-output div.columns-3 div.column{float:left;width:33.3%;min-width:200px}.mw-parser-output div.columns-4 div.column{float:left;width:25%;min-width:150px}.mw-parser-output div.columns-5 div.column{float:left;width:20%;min-width:120px}

0–20%   20–40%   40–60%

60–80%   80–100%

Geographical distribution of Northern Sotho in South Africa: density of Northern Sotho home-language speakers.

<1 /km²   1–3 /km²   3–10 /km²   10–30 /km²   30–100 /km²

100–300 /km²   300–1000 /km²   1000–3000 /km²   >3000 /km²

Northern Sotho (Sesotho sa Leboa), also known by the name of its standardised dialect version Sepedi (or Pedi) is a Bantu language spoken primarily in South Africa, where it is one of the 11 official languages. According to the 2011 census it was the first language of 4,618,576 people in South Africa, principally in the provinces of Limpopo, Gauteng and Mpumalanga.^[5]

Classification[edit]

Northern Sotho is one of the Sotho languages of the Bantu family. Northern Sotho is thus most closely related to Southern Sotho (mostly referred to as just Sesotho), Setswana, sheKgalagari and siLozi. It is a standardized dialect, amalgamating several distinct varieties or dialects.

Until recently, Lobedu (also Khilovedu or Khelobedu) used to exist only in an unwritten form, and the standard Northern Sotho language and orthography was usually used for teaching and writing by this language community. As of 2018, a Khilovedu dictionary is being compiled in addition to proper Khilovedu orthography which is also in the process of being developed. The monarch associated with this language community is Queen Modjadji (also known as the Rain Queen). Lobedu is spoken by a majority of people in the Greater Tzaneen, Greater Letaba, and BaPhalaborwa municipalities, and a minority in Greater Giyani municipality, as well as in the Limpopo Province and Tembisa township in Gauteng. Its speakers are known as the Balobedu.

Sepulana (also sePulane) exists in unwritten form and forms part of the standard Northern Sotho. Sepulana is spoken in Bushbuckridge area by the MaPulana people.

Confusion of nomenclature with Sepedi[edit]

Northern Sotho is often equated with the dialect it is primarily based on,^{[citation needed]} Sepedi, and continued to be known as Pedi or Sepedi for some years after the new South African constitution appeared. However, the Pan South African Language Board and the Northern Sotho National Lexicography Unit now specifically endorse the names Northern Sotho or Sesotho sa Leboa.^{[citation needed]}

The original confusion arose from the fact that the (now official) Northern Sotho written language was based largely on the Sepedi dialect (from which missionaries first developed the orthography^{[citation needed]}), but has subsequently provided a common writing system for 20 or more varieties of the Sotho-Tswana languages spoken in the former Transvaal. The name "Sepedi" thus refers specifically to the language of the Pedi people,^{[citation needed]} while "Northern Sotho" refers to the official language of that name and to all the speech varieties it has been taken to cover.

The English version of the Constitution of South Africa refers to the language as "Sepedi".^[6] Its official translation into the language refers to it as "Sesotho sa Leboa" in the article about languages, but as "Sepedi" on the front page.^[7]

Other varieties of Northern Sotho[edit]

Apart from the Sepedi dialect itself, other languages or dialects covered by the term "Northern Sotho" appear to be a diverse grouping of communal speech-forms within the Sotho-Tswana group. They are apparently united by the fact that they are classifiable neither as Southern Sotho nor as Tswana.^[8]

Very little published information is available on these other dialects of Northern Sotho, but these have been reported:

• 
  kheLobedu (khiLobedu or seLobedu)


• seTlokwa


• seBirwa


• sePulana


• seKhutswe


• seTswapo


• SePai (transitional between Sotho-Tswana and Zulu/Swati)


• Sebididi(Sotho/Tswana) spoken in Setateng


• Phahladira


• Ga-Monyeki


• Abbortspoort


• Thabo Mbeki villages and surrounding farms north-east of the coal mining town Lephalale (formerly Ellisras)

The morphological and possible lexical variation among these dialects has led to the above assertion that 'Northern Sotho' is no more than a holding category for otherwise unclassified Sotho-Tswana varieties spoken in northeastern South Africa. Maho (2002) leaves SePhalaborwa and the "East Sotho" varieties of SeKutswe, SePai, and SePulana unclassified within Sotho–Tswana. Their precise classification would appear to be a matter for further research.

Writing system[edit]

Northern Sotho is written in the Latin alphabet. The letter š is used to represent the sound [ʃ] ("sh" is used in the trigraph "tsh" to represent an aspirated "ts" sound). Circumflex accent can be added to the letters e and o to distinguish their different sounds, but it is mostly used in language reference books. Some word prefixes, especially in verbs, are written separately from the stem.^[9]

Phonology[edit]

Vowels[edit]

Consonants[edit]

Within nasal consonant compounds, the first nasal consonant sound is recognized as syllabic. Words such as nthuša "help me", are pronounced as [n̩tʰuʃa]. /n/ can also be pronounced as /ŋ/ following a velar consonant.^[10]

Urban varieties of Northern Sotho, such as Pretoria Sotho (actually a derivative of Tswana), have acquired clicks in an ongoing process of such sounds spreading from Nguni languages.^[11]

Vocabulary[edit]

Some examples of Northern Sotho words and phrases:

Notes[edit]

External links[edit]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Northern Sotho language.

Northern Sotho edition of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

• 
  Dryer, Matthew S.; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2013). "Northern Sotho language". World Atlas of Language Structures Online. Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
  


• The Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Northern Sotho language


• Online Northern Sotho – English dictionary


• Online Northern Sotho explanatory dictionary


• Pan South African Language Board


• 
  Audio files in Pedi at Wikimedia Commons
  

Software[edit]

• 
  Spell checker for OpenOffice.org and Mozilla, OpenOffice.org, Mozilla Firefox web-browser, and Mozilla Thunderbird email program in Northern Sotho


• 
  Translate.org.za Project to translate Free and Open Source Software into all the official languages of South Africa including Northern Sotho


• Keyboard with extra Northern Sotho characters