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Ditema tsa Dinoko (Sesotho for "Ditema syllabary"), also known as ditema tsa Sesotho, is a constructed writing system (specifically, a featural syllabary) for the siNtu or Southern Bantu languages (such as Sesotho, Setswana, IsiZulu, IsiXhosa, SiSwati, SiPhuthi, Xitsonga, EMakhuwa, ChiNgoni, SiLozi, ChiShona and Tshivenḓa).
In Sesotho, nngwe is a variant (allomorph) of the adjective stem -ng used only for Class 9 nouns. The use of the number "one" in Sesotho is different from the other Sotho–Tswana languages, because the Sesotho -ng is an irregular enumerative which behaves sometimes like an adjective and can therefore become a noun.
Probably the most radical sound innovation in the Sotho–Tswana languages is that the Proto-Bantu prenasalized consonants have become simple stops and affricates. [2] Thus isiZulu words such as entabeni ('on the mountain'), impuphu ('flour'), ezinkulu ('the big ones'), ukulanda ('to fetch'), ukulamba ('to become hungry'), and ukuthenga ('to buy') are cognates to Sesotho [tʰɑbeŋ̩] thabeng ...
Since Sesotho is predominately prefixing, the root is usually the last morpheme of the word, unless enclitics follow. Not counting compounds and contractions, the word begins with zero or more proclitics , infixes, [ 4 ] and prefixes, followed by a stem, followed by zero or more suffixes (which extend the stem) and enclitics.
A classic example of a nasal carrying a tone: To form a locative from a noun, one of the possible procedures involves simply suffixing a low tone [ŋ̩] to the noun. To form the locative meaning "on the grass" one suffixes -ng to the word [ʒʷɑŋ̩] jwang ‡ [_ ¯ ], giving jwanng ‡ [_ ¯ _ ] [ʒʷɑŋ̩ŋ̩], with the two last syllabic nasals having contrasting tones.
Another problem is the complete lack of tone marking even though Sesotho is a grammatical tone language. Not only does this also result in numerous homographs, it may also cause problems in situations where the only difference between grammatical constructions is the tones of a few key syllables in two otherwise similar sounding phrases.
Sotho is the root word. Various prefixes may be added for specific derivations, such as Sesotho for the Sotho language and Basotho for the Sotho people. Use of Sesotho rather than Sotho for the language in English has seen increasing use since the 1980s, especially in South African English and in Lesotho.
In isiZulu the forms are very predictable, with suffixes of the form aCa generally changing to eCe (aCa + ile ⇒; aiCe ⇒; eCe). ^ The fact that this is indeed the simple copulative (and not just a prefix that happens to be allomorphic with it) is evidenced by looking at these verbs in a language such as isiZulu where the simple copulative is much more complicated and yet coincides perfectly ...