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Tswana language |
| Tswana Setswana |
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|---|---|---|
| Spoken in: |  Botswana South Africa Zimbabwe Namibia |
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| Region: | southern Africa | |
| Total speakers: | 4,407,174citation needed | |
| Language family: | Niger-Congo Atlantic-Congo Benue-Congo Bantoid Southern Bantu Central Zone S Sotho-Tswana Tswana |
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| Official status | ||
| Official language in: | Botswana South Africa |
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| Regulated by: | no official regulation | |
| Language codes | ||
| ISO 639-1: | tn | |
| ISO 639-2: | tsn | |
| ISO 639-3: | tsn | |
| Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. | ||
Tswana (Setswana), is a Bantu language written in the Latin Alphabet. Tswana is the national and majority language of Botswana, whose people are the Batswana (singular Motswana). Although Setswana is the official language of Botswana, the majority of Setswana speakers are actually in the country of South Africa. There are also speakers in Zimbabwe and Namibia. Internationally there are about 4 million speakers. Before South Africa became a multi-racial democracy, the bantustan of Bophuthatswana was set up to cover the Tswana speakers of South Africa.
Tswana is a Bantu language, belonging to the Niger-Congo language family. It is most closely related to two other languages in the Sotho language group, Sesotho (Southern Sotho) and Northern Sotho (Sesotho sa Leboa). It has also been known as Beetjuans, Chuana (hence Bechuanaland), Coana, Cuana, and Sechuana.
Contents |
Formal inquiry after health:
(Replace tsogile with tlhotse for afternoon greetings.)
Informal inquiry after health:
Casual slang:
Other useful phrases:
Farewells:
Food:
Tswana has six vowel sounds: /ə/, /ɛ/, /e/, /ɪ/, /o/ and /u/, represented by the letters a, e, e, i, o and u respectively.
As opposed to the Ndebele languages spoken in Zimbabwe and South Africa, there are no significant differences between standard Tswana as spoken in South Africa and standard Tswana as spoken in Botswana.
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