The history of the Setswana Dictionary of the South African Languages
The history of the Setswana Dictionary of the South African Languages begins before its first printed entry. Setswana, also called Tswana, developed across Botswana, South Africa and Namibia, and every dictionary made from it records choices about contact, authority and belonging. The modern volume inherited older wordlists while recasting them through African-led institutions and electronic evidence. It is both a practical reference work and a record of how communities have represented their language.
The full title places the book within South Africa’s multilingual publishing world, but it is not a dictionary of every official language. Its core subject is Setswana. Its wider significance lies in the histories gathered inside entries: spelling, register, semantic range, variant forms, compounds and usage notes. A headword can preserve a settlement, occupation or relationship that prose may leave obscure.
The book belongs to a sequence running from nineteenth-century missionary vocabularies through national language projects to corpus-informed and learner-focused dictionaries. That sequence is not a march towards “correct” Setswana. Each stage reflects the needs of its makers: evangelists, teachers, civil servants, students and language communities. The history becomes clearer when books are read as instruments used and revised in changing circumstances.
Nineteenth-century vocabularies and missionary archives
Before colonial printing, Setswana knowledge was carried through speech, story, proverb, kinship practice and work. That knowledge was lexical even when it was not written as a dictionary. Colonial contact created the incentive to collect words on paper. Robert Moffat’s Vocabulary of the Tswana Language, published in 1843, is a well-known early record and shows how missionaries combined linguistic description with practical needs.
Early lists offered prayers, scriptural terms and vocabulary useful in daily life, sometimes with pronunciation guidance. Their selection was narrow, and English often supplied the grid of meaning. Missionary observers could impose assumptions about social life and overlook usage understood by speakers. Spelling systems changed as printers regularised sounds. These defects matter, yet the lists preserve genuine evidence, including older vocabulary and pragmatic expressions.
The material also depended on African linguistic knowledge and local expertise. Learners corrected forms, teachers supplied domains of use, and residents identified culturally specific meanings. Later editors inherited these contributions without always recording them. Setswana lexicography thus concerns invention and recovery: language contact supplied borrowings and altered meanings, while older knowledge had to be recovered from speech and an imperfect documentary trail.
From mission lists to national reference works
During the twentieth century, dictionaries became instruments of schooling, administration and literacy. New entries addressed agriculture, transport, health, politics and urban life. Standardised spelling made some varieties easier to teach and publish, while imposing tension between regional forms. Setswana’s official status in independent Botswana from 1966, and later recognition in post-apartheid South Africa, increased demand for dependable printed and institutional resources.
National language institutions gave this work a different setting from private missionary compilation. The Botswana Literature Bureau, university departments and African lexicographers produced teaching materials, glossaries and fuller dictionaries. These projects also challenged the hierarchy inherited from colonial dictionary-making. An African linguist could define an item through grammar and lived usage, document variants and place meanings in social context rather than merely attach an English equivalent.
Equivalence remained difficult. A Setswana term for welcome, respect, kinship or thanks may name a relationship that English does not divide in the same way. The problem of culturally faithful translation is international: a Japanese discussion of hospitality across languages shows why omotenashi resists an effortless Spanish substitute. The Setswana example raises the same editorial duty, separating a word’s social force from a rough synonym.
Building the South African languages dictionary
T. J. Otlogetswe’s lexicographical programme moved from a Setswana–English dictionary in 2008 to the broader Setswana Dictionary of the South African Languages in 2011. The later volume gathered a wide range of material into one formal reference work. Its scale marked a shift from spare two-column wordlists toward entries capable of showing multiple senses, parts of speech, etymologies, usage labels and contexts.
This design reflects the public for whom modern dictionaries are made. Teachers need reliable headwords and examples; students need historical detail and variation; public agencies need stable terminology; diaspora readers need guidance beyond school vocabulary. The title locates Setswana beside South Africa’s other official languages while recognising that it crosses national borders. It does not flatten Botswana, South Africa and Namibia into one uniform variety.
Purpose-specific publishing developed alongside the general volume. The project described in creating a thematic dictionary shows how a reference foundation can be reorganised around learners, with topics, selected meanings and accessible examples. Such a work does not replace a comprehensive dictionary. It creates a bridge into one, narrowing the distance between a large alphabetical volume and a learner seeking the right word for a situation.
Revision, corpus evidence and digital change
A published dictionary is the beginning of its working life. Usage changes, meanings drift and new terms enter public discussion, so revision depends on evidence rather than memory. The method described in corpus data and revisions shows the value of examining large samples of actual language: frequency can reveal dominant words, while contexts distinguish stable meanings from occasional ones.
Corpus work reveals collocations, preferred constructions, register differences and patterns of spelling variation. It can also expose omissions in older editions. Yet a corpus is a sample, not the whole language. Newspaper prose privileges public debate, while radio, social conversation, family talk and oral poetry distribute words differently. Sound revision therefore combines corpus findings with editorial judgement and community knowledge.
Digital delivery adds speed and possibilities that paper cannot offer: updated senses, audio, hyperlinks, compound search and versions that can be corrected. It also raises questions about ownership, data maintenance and who funds updates. A dictionary remains trustworthy only when users, editors and language communities can see how an entry has changed and why. Preservation here is an active practice, sustained through evidence, access and continuing conversation.
Lessons for Australian language publishing
Australian readers encounter familiar concerns in a different setting. Setswana and Indigenous Australian languages belong to different families and histories, so the comparison must not flatten them. What travels well is the need for community authority: a language office or cultural organisation should shape access, examples and attribution. The Commonwealth’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Languages Act 2024 creates a national framework for language preservation and a formal role for AIATSIS, the Canberra-based research body that supports archival and community-led publishing.
The local market matters too. Melbourne’s universities, public libraries and specialist bookshops circulate academic and bilingual books; Canberra’s National Library and language archives support researchers; community classes in Sydney turn dictionaries into shared classroom tools. Multilingual households and community radio make code-switching an everyday Australian reality. A viable dictionary can serve schools, libraries, universities, community organisations and families at once.
Copyright and consent shape how the market can use the work. Australia’s Copyright Act 1968 (Cth) affects quotations, scans and reproductions of dictionary content, while Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property protocols can place cultural restrictions beyond bare legal permission. These considerations influence print runs, digital licences and pricing. A publisher that treats communities as rights-holders and expert language authorities can build trust; one that treats entries as detached data risks producing a searchable book with little cultural life.
Viewed together, these stages form a history of changing authority over language. Vocabulary moved among oral expertise, missionary archives, schools, national institutions, universities and digital systems, and each setting altered what was recorded. The point to remember is that a dictionary preserves language only when its evidence, authority and access remain connected to the living communities that give those words meaning.