Do you Know anything about amaPhuti?! I dd not Knew the existence of AbaPhuti unti a friend of mine Dineo told me last week that she is infact not a Sotho but a Phuthi and tried to tell me the diference but I did my own Research ..here is what I found... Phuthi (Síphùthì) is a Nguni Bantu language spoken in southern Lesotho and areas in South Africa adjacent to the same border. The closest substantial living relative of Phuthi is Swati (or Siswati), spoken in Swaziland and the Mpumalanga province of South Africa. Although there is no contemporary sociocultural or political contact, Phuthi is linguistically part of a historic dialect continuum with Swati. Phuthi is heavily influenced by the surrounding Sotho and Xhosa languages, but retains a distinct core of lexicon and grammar not found in either Xhosa or Sotho, and found only partly in Swati to the north. The documentary origins of Phuthi can be traced to Bourquin (1927), but in other oblique references nearly 200 years from the present (Ellenberger 1912). Until recently, the language has been very poorly documented with respect to its linguistic properties. The only significant earlier study (but with very uneven data, and limited coherent linguistic assumptions) is Godfrey Mzamane (1949). Geography and demography It has been estimated that around 20,000 people in South Africa and Lesotho use Phuthi as their home language, but the actual figures could be much higher. No census data on Phuthi-speakers is available from either South Africa or Lesotho. The language is certainly endangered. Phuthi is spoken in dozens (perhaps many dozens) of scattered communities in the border areas between where the far northern Eastern Cape meets Lesotho: from Herschel northwards and eastwards, and in the Matatiele area of the northeastern Transkei; and throughout southern Lesotho, from Quthing in the southwest, through regions south and east of Mount Moorosi, to mountain villages west and north of Qacha (Qachas Nek). Within Phuthi, there are at least two dialect areas, based on linguistic criteria: Mpapa/ Daliwe vs. all other areas. This taxonomy is based on a single (but very salient) phonological criterion (presence/absence of secondary labialisation). Mpapa and Daliwe (Sotho Taleoe [taliwe]) are villages in southern Lesotho, southeast of Mount Moorosi, on the dust road leading to Tosing, then on to Mafura (itself a Phuthi-speaking village), and finally Mpapa/Daliwe. Other Phuthi-speaking areas (all given in Lesotho Sotho orthography) include Makoloane [makolwani] and Mosuoe [musuwe], near Quthing, in south-western Lesotho; Seqoto [siǃɔtɔ] (Xhosa Zingxondo, Phuthi Sigxodo [siᶢǁɔdɔ]); Makoae [makwai] (Phuthi Magwayi) further to the east; and a number of villages north and west of Qachas Nek. (Qacha is the main southeastern town in Lesotho, in the Qachas Nek District). Phuthi-speaking diaspora (that is, heritage) areas include the far northern Transkei villages of Gcina [gǀina] (on the road to the Tele Bridge border post) and Mfingci [mfiᵑǀi] (across the Tele River, opposite Sigxodo, approximately). Political history The most famous Phuthi leader in the historical record was the powerful chief,Moorosi (born in 1795). It seems that approximately the land south of the Orange River in present-day Lesotho was Phuthi-speaking during the time of the greatest historical figure in the history of the Sotho people, Moshoeshoe I – just seven years older than Moorosi—whose authority in the 1830s, however, was far from covering the present-day territory of Lesotho. Until 1820, there were only a few isolated villages of Basotho, and a small clan of Baphut[h]i, over which Moshoeshoe exercised ill-defined sovereignty.[5] Most Phuthis, with Moorosi, were far to the south of Thaba Bosiu, south of the Orange River, well out of Moshoeshoes way. Moorosi was to die in unclear circumstances on Mount Moorosi (Sotho Thaba Moorosi) in 1879, after a protracted nine-month siege by the British, Boer (i.e. Afrikaner farmers) and Basotho forces (including the military participation of the Cape Mounted Riflemen). This siege is often referred to as Moorosis Rebellion. The issue that triggered the siege was alleged livestock theft in the Herschel area. In the aftermath of the siege, Phuthi people dispersed widely over what is contemporary southern Lesotho and the northern Transkei region, to escape capture by the colonial powers. It is for this reason, it has been hypothesised, that Phuthi villages (including Mpapa, Daliwe, Hlaela, Mosifa and Mafura—all to the east of Mount Moorosi, in Lesotho) are typically found in such topographically mountainous regions, accessible only with great difficulty to outsiders). After the siege of Moorosis rebellion, many Phuthi people were captured, and forced into building the bridge (now, the old bridge) at Aliwal North that crosses the Senqu (Orange River). Prior to 1879, it seems Moorosi had been regarded in some ways as a very threatening competitor to Chief Moshoeshoe I. Even though currently represented to a nominal extent in the Lesotho government in Maseru, subsequent to the 1879 uprising the Phuthi people essentially fade from modern Lesotho and Eastern Cape history. Classification Phuthi is a Bantu language, clearly within the southeastern Zone S (cf. Guthrie 1967–1971). But within southern Africa Phuthi is viewed ambivalently as being either a Nguni or a Sotho–Tswana language, given the very high level of hybridity displayed in all subsystems of the grammar (lexicon,phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax). But Phuthi is genetically—along with Zulu, Xhosa, northern and southern Ndebele and Swati—certainly a Nguni language. Thus, it should be numbered in the S.40 group within Zone S, following Guthries classification. Further, given the range of lexical, phonological and even low-level phonetic effects that appear to be shared almost exclusively with Swati, Phuthi can be classified uncontroversially as a Tekela Nguni language, that is, in the subset of Nguni that includes Swati, some versions of Southern Ndebele, and the Eastern Cape remnant languages, Bhaca and Hlubi. The contemporary lexicon and morphology of Phuthi confirms the standard claim (e.g. Godfrey Mzamane 1949) that Phuthi displays very heavy contact and levelling effects from its long cohabitation with Sotho (for a period perhaps in excess of three centuries). There is, for example, a very high level of lexical doublets for many items, for many speakers, e.g. -ciga think (Nguni-source), and -nakana think (Sotho-source). Phuthi noun class prefixes are nearly all of the shape CV- (that is, they follow the Sotho consonant-vowel shape, not the general Nguni VCV- shape). There are also regional effects: the Mpapa Phuthi dialect (the only one to retain labialised coronal stops) leans much more heavily towards Sotho lexicon and morphology (and even phonology), whereas the Sigxodo dialect leans more towards Xhosa lexicon and morphology (and even phonology). Phonology and morphology Sustained field work in 1994/1995 among speech communities in Sigxodo and Mpapa (southern Lesotho) resulted in the discovery of a surprisingly wide range of phonological and morphological phenomena (including the nine that follow here), aspects of which are unique to Phuthi (within all of the southern Bantu region).
Posted on: Sat, 12 Jul 2014 17:59:20 +0000
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015