Sesotho, also known as Southern Sotho, is spoken by about 6 million people, primarily in Lesotho where it is the national and majority language and in South Africa and Zimbabwe, where it also holds official status. A member of the Bantu branch of the Niger-Congo family, Sesotho is tonal and agglutinative, with an extensive system of noun classes. Written in the Latin alphabet, it has a subject-verb-object word order. Sesotho is central to Basotho cultural heritage, reflected in oral poetry, proverbs, music, and the iconic Basotho blanket tradition.
Stats
Language Family: Niger-Congo
Writing System: Latin
Writing System Type: Alphabet
Writing Direction: L to R
Tones / Pitch Accent: 2
Morphology: Agglutinative
Cases: 0
Grammatical Gender / Noun Class: 20
Number of Verb Tenses: 4
Word Order: SVO
Number of Vowels (Monophthongs): 9
Number of Consonants: 32
Areas Where Spoken
Lesotho (official) (85%) (1.99 mil)
South Africa (official) (7.6%) (4.87 mil)
Zimbabwe (official) (0.3%) (50 k)