Stories

  1. Setswana Word of the Month: Understanding MokgwaA single Setswana word can carry several layers of meaning, and mokgwa is a good example. It may refer to a method, a way of doing something, a habit, a manner…
  2. Defining Thuto in a Bilingual DictionaryA Setswana speaker in Gaborone says "Ke batla thuto" and an English speaker in Perth might hear that as a request for punishment, or for schooling, depending…
  3. How European tongues shaped the Setswana lexiconSetswana belongs to the Sotho-Tswana branch of the Bantu family, with most speakers distributed across Botswana, South Africa, and the small community in…
  4. Bringing the screen to Setswana: the subtitler's craftStreaming platforms now reach far more households than they did a decade ago, and viewers expect their favourite series, documentaries and feature films to be…
  5. How lexicographers distinguish and document homonymsA homonym is a word form that coincides with another form but carries a different meaning. The overlap may occur in spelling, pronunciation, or both. English…
  6. Building a Setswana Term Bank for Information TechnologySetswana, spoken by millions across South Africa, Botswana, and Namibia, plays a central role in education, broadcasting, and public life throughout southern…
  7. The quiet divide between speaking and preaching in SetswanaSetswana, the Bantu language spoken across Botswana and parts of South Africa, treats the act of speaking as more than a single verb. For English-speaking…
  8. Translation and the living memory of Setswana oral traditionsTranslation is often described as a transfer of words between languages. For oral traditions, it is something more consequential: it can give a story, proverb,…
  9. The etymology of lentswe and its linguistic relativesThe Setswana form lentswe is commonly associated with a voice, utterance, or spoken expression. In some contexts it may be rendered in English as “word”,…
  10. Building a frequency dictionary of Setswana for language learnersSetswana, one of the eleven official languages of South Africa and spoken across Botswana and parts of Namibia, has long lacked the kind of learner-oriented…