Sotho
Sotho is a collective term for ethnic groups of Bantu , the Sotho-Tswana languages speaking and mainly in the countries of South Africa , Botswana and Lesotho live. In addition to the language, they have other cultural similarities.
history
Around 1500 the Sotho came to today's settlement area and split into three groups that still exist today:
- West Sotho or Batswana with the language Setswana
- South Sotho or Basotho with the Sesotho language
- North Sotho with the North Sotho languages ( Sepedi as standard dialect )
The three groups are linked by some similar cultural elements. They have closely related languages, share totemism and ancestral cult, and have similar social structures. At their head there is a traditional head, whose office is inherited. Traditionally they are mainly cattle breeders, but also artisans. They mostly live in larger, closed settlements.
The differences between the three groups are based on the one hand on the differences in their settlement areas: the Basotho populate a more mountainous area (partly Lesotho ), whereas the Batswana populate the savannah (mainly the former western Transvaal and neighboring Botswana ). On the other hand, there were differences due to the Mfecane , who forced the Basotho to unite with other migrating ethnic groups under their leader Moshoeshoe I. The differences between the two peoples also result from their missionary work by various European missionary societies ( London Missionary Society , Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society , Moravian Brethren and Société des missions évangéliques de Paris ), which also played a major role in the development of the modern languages Setswana, Sesotho and Sepedi by introducing their own orthographic systems.
In the Northern Sotho, the Pedi or Bapedi form the core group. These include other tribes such as the Balobedu .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c Description of the Sotho with a focus on Basotho at sahistory.org.za (English), accessed on September 16, 2015
- ↑ Eric Anderson Walker (Ed.): The Cambridge History of the British Empire. Volume 2. CUP Archive, Cambridge 1963, p. 36. Excerpts from books.google.de