How Setswana Handles Borrowed Verbs from English

English has been in sustained contact with Setswana in Botswana, where English is an official language, and in communities across southern Africa. The contact is visible in government, education, media, technology and everyday conversation. A verb borrowed from English does not simply arrive as a finished item. It may be quoted unchanged, reshaped to fit Setswana sounds, given Setswana grammatical endings, or replaced by a Setswana word chosen for its local meaning.

Verb borrowing is especially revealing because a verb carries tense, aspect, negation, agreement and relationships between participants. A noun can function as a relatively stable label for an object or idea; a verb must work inside a sentence. In Setswana, an English root therefore meets a morphologically rich system. Depending on the speaker and situation, the result can be a bilingual switch, a partially integrated loanword, or a conventional word used by people who do not speak English.

Adaptation, translation and switching

Setswana verbs are built from a lexical root together with affixes that mark subjects, objects, tense and related categories. As a Bantu language, Setswana can make relationships between participants visible in the verb itself. A borrowed English root does not always receive every marker at once. A bilingual speaker may first use it as a recognisable English item inside a Setswana frame, then regularise its sound or spelling, and later receive inflectional endings that make it behave like an ordinary verb. The exact route differs between communities, generations and domains.

An English stem can sit after the Setswana infinitive marker go, as in the schematic go plan. Modern digital conversations may also contain check, scan, post, share, follow and like. These forms may occur as English code-switches, as adapted stems, or with Setswana grammar around them. Their presence does not establish that every speaker uses them in the same way. The main patterns can be shown schematically:

Strategy	Possible form or pattern	What changes	Evidence to preserve
Direct borrowing	go plan	The English stem stays recognisable inside a Setswana sentence.	The exact wording and the speaker’s language choice.
Sound adaptation	An adapted check or plan with a regularised ending	Final sounds, consonant clusters or stress may be adjusted.	Audio, pronunciation and spelling variants.
Grammatical integration	An English root plus Setswana affixes	The loan participates in tense, agreement or complement marking.	Which endings occur and with which subjects or objects.
Semantic translation	An existing Setswana verb	The meaning is carried by a local form rather than the English stem.	Intended sense and any difference in usage.
Alternation	An English clause followed by a Setswana equivalent	Meaning is negotiated across two linguistic systems.	Context, audience and frequency.

These patterns are not mutually exclusive categories, nor do they represent fixed stages that every word passes through. A technical speaker might retain an English form during a presentation, while a family member uses a Setswana equivalent at home. A younger speaker may know a hybrid form that an older speaker pronounces differently. For a dictionary, the important record is often the pattern of alternation, not a single supposedly correct spelling.

Sounds and endings reshape the verb

An English consonant cluster, final consonant or stress pattern may not fit Setswana phonology, so speakers often simplify, substitute or add sounds. A form can sound almost unchanged to an English-speaking listener yet have a different syllable shape in fluent Setswana. These adjustments are not signs of defective pronunciation. They are evidence that the word is being fitted to the sound system of the language in which it is being used.

Orthography can lag behind speech. One speaker may write the English spelling, another may spell out the sound they use, and a dictionary editor may choose a regularised form after consulting attestations. A corpus should preserve those differences rather than collapse them. It should also distinguish a direct borrowing from English from a form transmitted through another language, a distinction that matters in a region with histories of English, Afrikaans and Setswana contact.

Australian readers know that contact is not abstract. On a Melbourne tram, “stand clear” is part of a routine public instruction; in an Australian workplace, “circle back” can organise a meeting without anyone treating it as foreign. In Melbourne and Sydney, where English often sits alongside many community languages, speakers may switch or reshape terminology in an ordinary conversation. These English examples are not Setswana loans, but they show how a routine phrase can become part of local public or workplace life.

Meaning moves with the borrowed verb

Once a verb is used locally, its meaning may be narrower, broader or differently mapped than in English. Semantic shift can accompany this process, so the English source and the Setswana use may not have identical ranges of meaning. An English word such as study may be learned first for a school activity, while a translated Setswana expression may cover research more broadly. An English word used in a school, office or online platform can also acquire a local association with the institution where it was learned. The dictionary entry must therefore record a gloss alongside the domain, typical objects and actions associated with the loan.

The structure of the sentence creates another layer. English may allow a speaker to carry over a familiar pattern, including a verb with a direct object that comes from an English-medium lesson or manual. Another speaker may use a Setswana construction that marks the relationship differently, or choose an existing verb with a different complement pattern. Both strategies can be grammatical; they reflect different balances between English syntax, Setswana syntax and the setting in which the action occurs.

A related case is traced in mogolo’s changing meaning, where the history of a Setswana word shows how social and historical change can alter interpretation. The same principle applies to borrowed verbs. Their apparent simplicity in a dictionary can hide a history of contact: an English term may have been learned through schooling, work, travel or media, then used in contexts its original users would not have predicted. An audio example and a dated written example can reveal that history more clearly than a translation alone.

Variation is evidence, not error

Variation should not be treated as noise to be cleaned out of the record. In Botswana, the balance between English and Setswana can change with the audience, the subject and the speaker’s confidence. A government meeting, a classroom lesson, a shop counter and a family group may each favour a different form. The same person may use an English verb when discussing a new device and a Setswana expression when giving an account of a familiar activity. Context is part of the word’s social meaning.

This variation is familiar in Australian cities, where multilingual workplaces and public services often require speakers to shift between technical English and other languages. An Australian team may use “arvo” in an informal message, “footy” in conversation, and a more formal term in a report, while retaining English sentence structure. The parallel is structural rather than a claim that Australian English and Setswana share a history. Both settings show how one language can provide a shared base while allowing speakers to signal familiarity, status and domain.

The Australian publishing market offers a useful parallel in its attention to usage evidence. The Australian National Dictionary Centre documents regional and historical vocabulary, while the Macquarie Dictionary records contemporary Australian usage. A Setswana entry would benefit from the same discipline: a headword, pronunciation, morphological notes, provenance, register, dated examples and transparent links between source forms and local meanings. That approach keeps a dictionary connected to speech instead of presenting it as a closed list.

Recording verbs in living use

Documenting a borrowed verb therefore involves several decisions. The researcher should identify the intended source, ask whether the form is used by more than one speaker, record the surrounding sentence and preserve the original wording. A useful entry can separate the English citation form, its etymology or transmission path, the Setswana adaptation and a fully translated equivalent. It can also show uncertainty without making the uncertainty look like an absence of knowledge.

Corpus evidence and community knowledge work together here. Frequency counts can show that a form is spreading, but they cannot by themselves explain whether a speaker understands it as a loan, a code-switch or a local innovation. Discussions with speakers can reveal which sounds are natural, which meanings feel obvious and which contexts make the English form preferable. The broader picture appears on T.J. Otlogetswe’s professional site, where lexicography, corpus linguistics, translation and the preservation of African languages are treated as connected practices.

A concrete next step is a documented fieldwork item: one naturally spoken sentence containing an English loan verb, preserved with its speaker, place, meaning, exact wording and audio.