New Setswana Dictionary breaks tradition

MONKAGEDI GAOTLHOBOGWE
Staff Writer | Thursday July 19, 2012 00:00

The effects of the new Setswana dictionary and its influence on the way Setswana is written from now on could be far reaching. The new dictionary, Tlhalosi ya Medi Ya Setswana, is written for use by people of all ages; primary, secondary, tertiary education students, and other users of Setswana will look to it as a resource. It is the third Setswana dictionary since  Morulaganyi  Kgasa published the first one in 1976, which was followed by  the second edition in 1998 by Kgasa and Joseph Tsonope.

Writers of Setswana are traditionally cautious with their word selection, preferring to go for what would be seen as pure and acceptable language of our forefathers, rather than selecting words that are used casually in informal settings. This  conformity to tradition is known as, 'setswana se se phepa' (pure Setswana). Writers of Setswana  are largely conservative, guarding against borrowing words from other cultures, despite the fact that the words which are resisted are used every day.

The new Setswana dictionary recently launched by Medi Publishing, and authored by Thapelo Otlogetswe from the University of Botswana could rub the traditionalists the wrong way with its free spirited 'borrowing' that  seems to make more than 50 percent of its  content. Many of these words did not make it into  previous  Setswana dictionaries. 

Borrowed words in the new Setswana dictionary include;  AIDS, foramo (forum), meloterama (melodrama), memorantamo (memorandam), setatamente (statement), sepeti (speed), phanele (panel), waene (wine), wina (win), washene (washing) and waelese (wireless). The dictionary is also rich with obscenity; the author has included this vocabulary so that the user knows such a word is vulgar and hopefully refrains  from using it.

For young Setswana writers,  the new dictionary could be  a welcome resource that breaks the rigidity set by Setswana language moralists.  The new dictionary might give the open-minded, young Setswana writer the confidence to use modern Setswana words as used by the speakers of Setswana.

Radio Botswana has in past decades been in the forefront  in using pure Setswana, with their translators able to churn out 'appropriate' Setswana vocabulary for  some of the latest technologies and changes.  A tractor (terekekere) became tshukudu ya temo, a hospital (sepatela) became kokelo, window, though is commonly referred to as fenstere (borrowed from Afrikaans)  is often called seokomela-bagwe or letlhaba-phefo by the moralists.   In many Setswana novels, a table is referred to as lobati-lwa-bojelo, though many Batswana in their everyday use refer to the table as tafole. 

When the cell-phone arrived in the late '90s  Tswana writers, and Radio Botswana,  gave it the name mogala wa letheka.  Its predecessor, the telephone, was officially called mogala, or mosokela-tsebeng, by  Setswana writers, though in everyday language people would  just  use founo, from phone.

Paging through the 702 pages, one cannot help but admire the  efforts the author took to document these so-called non-setswana words that are often shunned by writers and broadcasters as impure but are used every day by the speakers of the language.

According to the author, this dictionary was written from a corpus  of 15 million words which include  a wide range of Setswana words, from short stories, novels, newspapers, plays/drama, grammar books among others.

The new dictionary is also  the first of its kind to include Setswana vocabulary used across the border in South Africa, as well as other Setswana words used by the various Tswana tribes in Botswana. When launching the dictionary at the University of Botswana, the author said  he intended it to be used as a reference point  by  all Batswana in this country, South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Namibia,  where Setswana is spoken.

The words in the dictionary are also presented phonetically, in brackets like in a modern English dictionary, to help the user learn how to pronounce a particular word. In most cases, the roots of the words are  also explained in this dictionary. 

Every word is also accompanied by selected Setswana proverbs that are related  to that word, as well as the interpretation of those proverbs (diane le maele).