Tswana or Setswana language

The Tswana or Setswana language is the native language of the Tswana people of southern Africa. The language is also known by the alternate names of Bechuana, Beetjuana, Chwana, Sechuana, Secwana, or Tshwana. It is the lingua franca, or common language, of the nation of Botswana and one of the eleven official Indigenous languages of South Africa. In Botswana, speakers of Tswana form a majority of the population; Tswana is also the sixth-largest language group in South Africa. The name of Botswana is derived from the Tswana people and their language. Despite this, South Africa is home to a greater population of Indigenous Tswana speakers than its neighbor to the north. Smaller numbers of people in Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Swaziland, and Namibia also speak Tswana. In total, over five million people speak Tswana.

Background

The Tswana people are one of two groups that make up the Southern Sotho tribal group. The Sotho, in turn, form one of the three largest subdivisions of the Bantu peoples. The Sotho groups are differentiated from other Bantu groups by their language, their use of totems, and their distinct round huts built with thatched conical roofs.

The first Tswana people were descended from a Bantu group that immigrated to southern Africa between six and fifteen hundred years ago. These earliest immigrants to southern Africa were primarily cattle herders who found the high plains of Botswana and northern South Africa to be suitable for their cattle.

The origins of the name Tswana are unknown, though it is believed that it was given to the Tswana people by European settlers. By the early nineteenth century, various Tswana groups under the rule of King Makaba II had become the dominant tribe in the region. By 1880, in collaboration with newly arrived Western merchants, the Tswana were able to take advantage of their favorable relationships with White settlers and position themselves in charge of the region during the era. Though the English language slowly overtook Tswana as the preeminent tongue of colonial South Africa and the British protectorate of Bechuanaland—the state that went on to become Botswana—Tswana remained a vital language in regions where the Tswana maintained a majority. English remained the primary language of government in both countries, but Tswana was named an official language of South Africa in 1997; it remains the de facto national of Botswana.

Tswana was the first Sotho language to have a written form. It was first documented by Western sources in 1806 when German explorer and scientist Heinrich Lichtenstein wrote Upon the Language of the Beetjuana about the Tswana language. Further Western testaments to the prevalence of the language were documented by John Cambell, who translated several Tswana phrases in an 1815 work, and by Dr. Robert Moffatt of the London Missionary Society in 1818. Moffatt established the first Western-style school in Botswana and later edited Tswana translations of various biblical sources between 1830 and 1857. Missionary James Archbell issued the first Tswana grammar book in 1833, though he failed to differentiate between Tswana and Xhosa, a language only distantly related to Tswana. In 1929, Solomon T. Plaatje became the first known native speaker to write a work in Tswana with the release of Tones of Secwana Nouns. Plaatje went on to become one of the founding members of the South African Native National Congress—an opposition group to the white minority government—and an important advocate for the Tswana language in South Africa. He later went on to translate several of Shakespeare’s works into Tswana.

Overview

Tswana is regarded as part of the broad Niger-Congo language family. More specifically, it is classified as a Southern Bantu language. The larger Bantu family of languages are spoken by the various Bantu peoples found throughout Sub-Saharan Africa. Tswana is closely related to Sotho, a language primarily found in Lesotho and South Africa. Sotho and Tswana are mutually intelligible, and some linguists have suggested forming a new single language, defined as Sotho-Tswana. The Tswana people are sometimes called the Western Sotho or Batswana. The Sotho ethnic groups are generally classified together in large part because of their shared linguistic background. Some people in the region also differentiate between Setswana and Tswana, though linguists have found little evidence for such divisions.

In Botswana, English is the only listed official language, though it is spoken as a first language by only around 2 percent of the country’s population. By contrast, Tswana is the primary language for about 77 percent of Botswanans. While English is used by the government for all official documents, Tswana is typically the de facto language of conversation. As a result, English is often perceived as the country’s written language, while Tswana serves as its spoken language. This unusual relationship between languages may be traced back, at least in part, to the country’s educational system. Between the time Botswana gained independence from the United Kingdom in 1966 and 1976, English remained as a holdover from the colonial era as the primary language of instruction in schools. In 1977, the Tswana-led Botswanan government established Tswana as the language used for the first four years of schooling, after which studies transitioned into English. By the mid-1990s, the government limited Tswana instruction to only the first two years of school before moving students over to English.

As with many languages that become sanctioned as a national language, the use of Tswana in schools has led to resentment and some controversy among other ethnic groups. Various national policies established by the Tswana majority were used to encourage Tswana’s stranglehold as the national language of the populace. Beyond its use as the language of early education, Tswana politicians authorized the study of Tswana culture during this early period of schooling, while largely ignoring the contributions of other groups. The message perceived by minority language speakers was that they were lesser or subordinate to native Tswana speakers. As a secondary goal, such methods were intended to assimilate minority cultures into the Tswana majority, resulting in a more homogenous population guided by Tswana cultural practices.

Bibliography

Austin, Peter. “Tswana.” One Thousand Languages: Living, Endangered, and Lost. University of California Press, 2008.

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“An Introduction to the Setswana Language.” Peace Corps Botswana, files.peacecorps.gov/multimedia/audio/languagelessons/botswana/Bw‗Setswana‗Language‗Lessons.pdf. Accessed 6 Jan. 2025.

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Nyati-Ramahobo, Lydia. “Tensions between Multiple Realities: The Long Road to Multilingual Schools in Botswana.” Imagining Multilingual Schools: Languages in Education and Glocalization. Multilingual Matters, 2006, pp. 201-206.

“Setswana Language.” SA-Venues, www.sa-venues.com/language-setswana.htm. Accessed 6 Jan. 2025.

“Tswana.” South African History Online, 15 June 2018, www.sahistory.org.za/article/tswana. Accessed 6 Jan. 2025.

“Tswana Language.” World Mapper, worldmapper.org/maps/tswana-language/. Accessed 6 Jan. 2025.