The story of the Dictionary of Setswana Proverbs

Setswana, 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 guide to behaviour, morality, and social harmony. For decades, however, much of that wisdom existed only in the mouths of elders, scattered across anthologies, religious texts, and fading schoolbooks. The dictionary that finally gathered this wealth into a single, scholarly volume is the result of patient fieldwork, cultural diplomacy, and a belief that a language's proverbs are as essential as its grammar.

Understanding that story matters beyond Botswana. In places like Melbourne, where the African diaspora has grown alongside community radio stations, or in Perth, where universities host researchers working on Bantu linguistics, the trajectory of this dictionary offers lessons for anyone invested in documenting oral heritage. Even readers far from southern Africa can sense the urgency when a proverb collection is treated with the same seriousness as a national atlas.

From childhood notebooks to a national project

T.J. Otlogetswe's path to lexicography began with notebooks. As a child in Botswana, he scribbled down expressions overheard at family gatherings, drawn to the rhythm of phrases that compressed whole philosophies into a few syllables. That childhood habit evolved into formal training in South Africa, where his formal education introduced him to corpus methods and the discipline of dictionary making. The leap from a private notebook to a published reference work required academic rigour and a network of consultants willing to share their knowledge.

Many of those consultants were older speakers, often working as farmers, teachers, or pastors. They were the living archives of proverbial usage. The dictionary project would have been impossible without their willingness to sit for hours, debating whether a particular phrase belonged to a specific region or applied across the whole Setswana-speaking world. Their contributions echo a tradition seen globally: in Australia, the work of the Australian National Dictionary Centre in Canberra depends on similar networks of regional informants who log unique words and phrases from coastal towns to the outback.

Choosing what to include and what to leave out

Compiling a dictionary of proverbs involves difficult editorial decisions. Every culture has proverbs that have fallen out of use, variants that exist only in certain dialects, and phrases that overlap so closely with another that they seem like translations. The team had to decide whether to include archaic forms that younger readers might not recognise, and whether to record multiple pronunciations or settle on a standard version. These are the same questions faced by lexicographers working on Australian English, where words like larrikin or cobber carry historical baggage that modern editions must address carefully.

The editorial team also wrestled with representation. Setswana is spoken across Botswana, parts of South Africa, and Namibia, and each region has proverbs that reflect local landscapes and customs. Including them all would have produced an unwieldy volume; excluding some would have erased valuable regional voices. The solution was to add contextual notes showing where each proverb was most commonly used. This approach resembles the way the Macquarie Dictionary in Sydney includes regional labels for Australian terms, distinguishing arvo usage in New South Wales from its reception in Western Australia.

How Setswana proverbs shape everyday speech

Setswana proverbs, known as dikopelo or maele a setso, function as a kind of everyday navigation system. When a parent warns a child about wasting money, when elders settle a dispute, or when friends greet one another after a long absence, a proverb often arrives as the natural response. Their compactness makes them memorable, and their imagery roots abstract advice in the natural world. Animals, weather, and farming life dominate the metaphor bank, much as Australian English relies on imagery drawn from the bush and the coast. A proverb about rain in Botswana carries the same practical authority as a warning about a frog choker in colloquial Australian speech.

For newcomers to Setswana, learning proverbs is often the gateway to understanding the culture's values. Expatriate workers in Botswana's mining towns, missionaries, and visiting diplomats have long used proverbial knowledge to negotiate cross-cultural situations. In Melbourne's multicultural suburbs, similar dynamics play out at community gatherings where African Australian families share sayings over weekend barbecues, blending Setswana proverbs with Australian colloquialisms. The dictionary makes this kind of cultural exchange more accessible by providing English translations alongside the original Setswana. The same attention to etymology that produced entries on Tshosa and Tshane shapes how the dictionary treats proverbs drawn from traditional weapons and hunting culture.

Why the dictionary matters beyond Botswana

A proverb dictionary is a reference book and a record of how a community reasons. When a proverb disappears, the conceptual tools it offered often go with it. This is why the dictionary is treated as a heritage document, placed alongside school curricula and broadcast on community radio stations. SBS Radio in Australia has long recognised the value of broadcasting in African languages, and similar multilingual initiatives in Gaborone have used proverbial content to keep younger speakers engaged. The dictionary supports those efforts by giving producers and teachers a reliable, scholarly source.

The project also offers methodological insights for linguists elsewhere. Corpus-based lexicography has matured rapidly, and the Setswana dictionary contributes to a global conversation about how oral material can be processed with modern tools. Researchers at the University of Melbourne and the Australian National University have studied similar challenges in documenting Indigenous Australian languages, where proverbs and storytelling traditions face their own preservation battles. The exchange of techniques between continents enriches both fields. Discussions of storytelling in technical writing reinforce how narrative framing can turn a dense reference work into something readers genuinely absorb, rather than merely consult.

From manuscript to living resource

The journey from handwritten draft to printed volume took years of revision. Multiple drafts circulated among co-authors, consultants, and reviewers. Funding bodies required evidence that the project would serve educational needs, and academic publishers demanded peer review. Each stage revealed new proverbs that had been overlooked and forced corrections to translations that did not quite capture the original nuance. The dictionary underwent the same long incubation as major Australian reference works, where the Macquarie Dictionary famously took more than a decade from planning to first release.

Once published, the dictionary entered a wider ecosystem. Schools adopted it for literature classes, churches used it for sermon preparation, and families consulted it during naming ceremonies. Digital versions made it possible for the diaspora, including African communities in Brisbane and Adelaide, to access the same content as readers in Gaborone. The book's reception has encouraged plans for further editions, expanded to include more regional variants and audio recordings of native pronunciation. The slow accumulation of entries, much like the patient growth of a small side venture, shows how modest weekly effort can compound into a substantial body of work.

A dictionary is never truly finished. New proverbs emerge as societies change, and existing ones acquire fresh meanings in new contexts. The most useful way to engage with the Dictionary of Setswana Proverbs is to read three entries each week, noting the imagery and the underlying advice, then testing those insights against everyday conversations; within a year, that habit alone produces a working command of several hundred proverbs and the cultural logic behind them.