Translating sermons with a steady Setswana voiceAs a lexicographer and corpus linguist, I treat sermon translation as a register problem before a wording problem. A spoken message can be grammatically…
Setswana Colour Terms: Basic And Extended CategoriesColour vocabulary offers a useful window into how Setswana organises meaning. A dictionary may provide an English equivalent for a Setswana term, yet the match…
The etymology of Setlhopha in Bantu languagesSetlhopha is the Setswana noun commonly rendered in English as “group,” “team,” or “association,” depending on context. Its central idea is collective action:…
Tracing fifty years of Setswana language changeA corpus turns scattered documents into evidence of how language behaves. For Setswana, also known as Tswana, a collection spanning roughly fifty years can…
Setswana emotion words: pelo and its compoundsSetswana gives emotional experience a vocabulary that grows outward from pelo, the ordinary word for “heart.” Literally it names an organ; figuratively it…
Zero-derivation entries in a Setswana dictionaryZero derivation in a Setswana dictionary concerns a form being used as a different word class without an overt derivational marker. It is narrower than…
Setswana plant names in the living dictionaryPlants enter a language through relationships: a particular tree near a river, the leaves used for seasoning, the bark brewed for tea, or the weed recognised…