Stories

  1. Defining Morero in a Setswana DictionaryA dictionary entry can appear deceptively simple: one headword, a pronunciation guide, a grammatical label and a few English equivalents. Yet morero shows why…
  2. Building a Parallel Corpus of Setswana Parliamentary DebatesA parallel corpus of Setswana parliamentary debates would bring together original speeches and their translations in a searchable, carefully annotated…
  3. When Go Robala Means More Than Sleep in SetswanaIn Setswana, go robala most directly means “to sleep”. Yet in the right setting, the same expression can refer to death. This is not a mistake or an accidental…
  4. The lexicographer’s approach to regional varieties of SetswanaA dictionary is often treated as a fixed record of correct words, yet living languages rarely fit inside a single, uniform system. Setswana is spoken across…
  5. Etymology of Morena and how the word travels through Bantu languagesIn many parts of southern Africa, a single word can carry the weight of a chief, a hymn, and a greeting all at once. Morena is one such word, used across…
  6. Translating Tourism Materials into Setswana: A Practical ExerciseTourism texts are deceptively simple. Brochures, museum panels, and walking-tour scripts read as if anyone with a dictionary could render them into another…
  7. How corpus tools reveal rare and archaic wordsRare and archaic words often survive in places that ordinary reading overlooks: a nineteenth-century newspaper, a legal instrument, a regional dictionary, or…
  8. The story of the Dictionary of Setswana ProverbsSetswana, like many Bantu languages, carries centuries of communal wisdom in its proverbs. A proverb in Setswana is more than a clever saying; it is a compact…
  9. When Setswana Words Cross Borders: Common Mistranslations ExplainedSetswana is spoken by roughly six million people across Botswana, South Africa, and parts of Namibia and Zimbabwe, and it continues to spread through diasporas…
  10. Building a Setswana Thesaurus: Challenges and SolutionsSetswana, one of the eleven official languages of South Africa, is spoken by roughly five million first-language users and several million second-language…