#tswana

The meaning of the word Botswana?

The country's name means "Land of the Tswana", referring to the dominant ethnic group in Botswana

Hi there! I don't really have many resources, and you're probably aware of the ones I've collected already, but I'll share them anyway:

This is a pretty handy grammar guide

Here's another guide that's aimed a bit more at beginner level

This Youtube channel has some lessons for beginners

Here's another Youtube channel with useful videos

Here's a video with some more lessons for beginners

Some Setswana courses on Memrise

It's also available on uTalk (which is also an app)

You can buy graded readers here

Tswana (Setswana)

Basic facts

Number of native speakers: 5.2 million

Official language: Botswana, South Africa, Zimbabwe

Language of diaspora: Namibia

Script: Latin, 40 letters

Grammatical cases: 0

Linguistic typology: agglutinative, SVO

Language family: Niger-Congo, Atlantic-Congo, Volta-Congo, Benue-Congo, Bantoid, Southern Bantoid, Bantu, Southern Bantu, Sotho-Tswana

Number of dialects: 10

History

1806 - first description of the language

1833 - first grammar

Writing system and pronunciation

These are the letters that make up the alphabet: a b c d e ê f g h i j k kg kh l m n ng o ô p ph q r s š t th tl tlh ts tsh tš tšh u v w x y z.

Tswana also has three click consonants, but they are only used in interjections and are falling out of use.

Stress always falls on the penultimate syllable of the word. There are two tones, high and low, but these are not marked orthographically.

Grammar

Nouns have eighteen classes, two numbers (singular and plural), and no cases. Some can be found in more than one class.

Some pronouns can be used as articles or adjectives when they follow nouns.

Verbs are conjugated for tense, mood, number, and person. They are followed by object markers.

Dialects