Сесото са Лебова: Язык Северо-Сото в Южной Африке

Sotho Tswana language spoken in South Africa
the northeastern South African language

Sesotho sa Lebowa is a Sotho Tswana language group spoken in the northeastern provinces of South Africa, most commonly in Mpumalanga, Gauteng and the Limpopo provinces. It is erroneously commonly referred to in its standardised form as Pedi or Sepedi and holds the status of an official language in South Africa. An official language for the Lebowa homeland during apartheid, it is the first language of over 4.6 million (9.1%) people according to the South African National Census of 2011, making it the 5th most spoken language in South Africa.

According to Chapter 1, Section 6 of the South African Constitution, Sepedi is one of South Africa's 12 official languages. There has been significant debate about whether Northern Sotho should be used instead of Pedi. The English version of the South African Constitution lists Sepedi as an official language, while the Sepedi or Northern Sotho version of the Constitution of South Africa lists Sesotho sa Lebowa as an official South African language.

South Africa's English Language policy refers to the eleven official languages of South Africa (i. e., Sepedi, Sesotho, Setswana, siSwati, Tshivenda, Xitsonga, Afrikaans, isiNdebele, isiXhosa, isiZulu and English), as specified in the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa.

The Northern Sotho written language was based largely on the Sepedi dialect. Missionaries studied this dialect the most closely and first developed the orthography in 1860 by Alexander Merensky, Grutzner, and Gerlachshoop. This subsequently provided a common writing system for 20 or more varieties of the Sotho Tswana languages spoken in the former Transvaal, and also helped lead to "Sepedi" being used as the umbrella term for the entire language family. However, there are objections to this synecdoche by other Northern Sotho dialect speakers, such as speakers of Modjadji's Lobedu dialect.

Northern Sotho can be subdivided into Highveld Sotho, which consists of comparatively recent immigrants mostly from the west and southwest parts of South Africa, and Lowveld Sotho, which consists of a combination of immigrants from the north of South Africa and Sotho inhabitants of longer standing. Like other Sotho Tswana people, their languages are named after totemic animals and, sometimes, by alternating or combining these with the names of famous chiefs.

The group consists of Lobedu, Narene, Phalaborwa (Malatji), Mogoboya, Kone, Kgaga, Pulana, Pai, Ramafalo, Mohale and Kutswe.

Northern Sotho is one of the Sotho languages of the Bantu family. Although Northern Sotho shares the name Sotho with Southern Sotho, the two groups have less in common with each other than they do with Setswana. Northern Sotho is also closely related to Setswana, sheKgalagari and siLozi. It is a standardized dialect, amalgamating several distinct varieties or dialects. Northern Sotho is also spoken by the Mohlala people. Most Khelobedu speakers only learn to speak Sepedi at school, such that Sepedi is only their second or third language. Khelobedu is a written language. Lobedu is spoken by a majority of people in the Greater Tzaneen, Greater Letaba, and BaPhalaborwa municipalities, and a minority in Greater Giyani municipality, as well as in the Limpopo Province and Tembisa township in Gauteng. Its speakers are known as the Balobedu. Sepulana exists in unwritten form and forms part of the standard Northern Sotho. Sepulana is spoken in Bushbuckridge area by the MaPulana people.

Sepedi is written in the Latin alphabet. The letter š is used to represent the sound [] ("sh" is used in the trigraph "tsh" to represent an aspirated ts sound). The circumflex accent can be added to the letters e and o to distinguish their different sounds, but it is mostly used in language reference books. Some word prefixes, especially in verbs, are written separately from the stem.