11/06/2026
From Sesotho as “Eastern Se-tshuâna” to Setswana as “Western Sesotho”!
Let’s talk about one of Southern Africa’s most underrated language dramas. It involves Sesotho, Setswana, and Sepedi; three closely related languages that have been labelled, shifted, and relabelled over time. The plot twist? Early scholars used to call Sesotho “Eastern Se-tshuâna.” Later on, Setswana got rebranded as “Western Sesotho.”
So what happened?
Did the languages switch places overnight? Not exactly. It’s more about who was writing things down, where they were standing, and what they decided to call what.
Back in the 1800s, missionaries and linguists weren’t obsessed with drawing hard lines between languages. They saw the Sotho-Tswana varieties as one big, flowing family, more like a dialect line than separate boxes.
Wilhelm Bleek, a linguist, wrote in his 1862 grammar that Sesotho was basically “Eastern Se-tshuâna (Se-suto),” while other varieties were “Western Se-tshuâna.” For him, “Sechuana” was the umbrella term. Sesotho was just the eastern flavour.
Missionary Eugène Casalis, who lived among the Basotho, said the same thing in his 1861 book: “The language of the Basutos, and of all the other branches of the large family of the Bechuanas, is generally known under the name of Sechuana.” So back then, according to these guys, if you spoke Sesotho, you were basically speaking a type of Sechuana.
No drama.
No identity crisis.
Even old dictionaries back this up. Jacob Döhne’s 1857 Zulu dictionary casually defines “um-SUTU, or Suto” as “An individual of the Bechuana-tribe.” It seems the lines between “Sotho” and “Tswana” were blurry.
People moved, traded, intermarried, and told stories across the same landscapes.
Later, Ellenberger (1912), noted that some dialects were just harsher or softer versions of the same speech. For instance, while he credits Bapedi as the first to carry the name “Basutu” (given by the amaSwazi in the 1700s), he called their Sesutu version harsh and crude. The Bakuena and Bafokeng, for instance, spoke what he was already calling “Sesuto of today,” which was, in his words, "softer."
So where did the split happen?
Enter the missionaries, the South African missionaries, to be exact; but this time, with pens and spelling rules.
Three different missionary groups sat down in three different regions to write down what they heard.
The Germans worked up north and shaped what became Sepedi. The London Missionary Society worked out west and developed Setswana. The Roman Catholics worked down south and standardized modern Sesotho. As Makalela (2024) puts it: “one language that should have one writing system and more readers has been divided into three different languages.”
And it gets even simpler: one author argued that Sepedi, Sesotho, and Setswana became “separate” largely because of where the missionaries were sitting. Their orthographies became the basis for school primers, Bibles, and colonial records. Before you knew it, people started believing these were completely distinct languages.
But go to a village near a border, and locals will tell you: they understand each other just fine.
By the mid-20th century, South African authorities tried to tidy things up. Between 1929 and 1961, they attempted to harmonize the varieties. Their new labels? Setswana became “Western Sotho,” Sesotho became “Southern Sotho,” and Sepedi became “Northern Sotho.” Suddenly, the umbrella term wasn’t “Sechuana” anymore; it was “Sesotho.” So what was once “Eastern Se-tshuâna” (Sesotho) was now one corner of a Sesotho world, and Setswana was reclassified as a western branch of that same Sesotho world.
That’s the reversal.
In the 1800s, Sechuana was the big tent, and Sesotho was a guest in the east. By the mid-1900s, Sotho was the big tent, and Setswana was a guest in the west.
The languages didn’t change.
The labels just flipped.
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If you are curious about the origin of the the three groups, Basotho, Batswana and Bapedi, check the following: https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1JhqCFXKDD/
References
1. Bleek, W. H. I. (1862). A comparative grammar of South African languages. Part I: Phonology. London: Trübner & Co.
2. Casalis, E. (1861). The Basutos; or, Twenty-three years in South Africa. London: James Nisbet & Co.
3. Cole, D. T. (1964). An introduction to Tswana grammar. Cape Town: Longmans.
4. Döhne, J. L. (1857). A Zulu-Kafir dictionary: Etymologically explained, with copious illustrations and examples. Cape Town: Pike & Co.
5. Ellenberger, D. F. (1912). History of the Basuto: Ancient and modern. London: Caxton Publishing Company.
6. Mabille, A., & Dieterlen, H. (1924). Sesuto-English dictionary (5th ed., revised and enlarged). Morija: Morija Sesuto Book Depot.
7. Makalela, L. (2021). Multilingual literacies and technology in Africa: Towards ubuntu digital translanguaging. In L. Makalela (Ed.), Rethinking language use in digital Africa. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.
8. Makalela, L. (2024). “Viewing multilingualism from a complex array of translanguaging and meaning-making practices provides opportunities for an epistemological shift from what languages look like to what speakers do with languages.” Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies, 42(Supplement 1), S207–S223. (As cited in the supplied document.)
9. Mojela, V. M. (2008). Language standardisation, harmonisation and the Sotho language cluster. In discussions on Sotho orthography development and language planning. (The exact source should be confirmed from the original publication.)
10. Mojela, V. M. (n.d.). A balanced and representative corpus: The effects of strict corpus-based dictionary compilation in Sesotho sa Leboa. Sesotho sa Leboa National Lexicography Unit, University of Limpopo.
11. Rakgogo, T. J. (2016). Sepedi or Sesotho sa Leboa? A sociolinguistic study. Unpublished Master's dissertation, University of Limpopo.
12. Rakgogo, T. J., & Zungu, E. B. (2021). The onomastic possibility of renaming the Sepedi and Sesotho sa Leboa (Northern Sotho) language names to restore peace, dignity and solidarity. Literator, 42(1), a1696. https://doi.org/10.4102/lit.v42i1.1696
13. Sefotho, M., Charamba, E., & Quintero, G. (n.d.). Translingualism across languages: A textual analysis of language interaction. (The full publication details are not provided in the source extract and should be verified before publication.)
14. Thom, G. M. (1887). Boers and Bantu: A history of the wanderings and wars of the emigrant farmers from their leaving the Cape Colony to the overthrow of Dingan. London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington.
