Languagle #28: Southern Sotho
Nonyana e bona ka mahlo, motho o bona ka kelello
"A bird sees with its eyes; a person sees with their mind."
What it means
Understanding takes more than seeing. A bird only sees with its eyes, but a person can think about what they see. The saying values judgement and reflection over appearances.
How to say it
no-NYA-na eh BO-na ka MA-hlo, MOO-toh oo BO-na ka keh-LEL-lo
Stress the second-to-last syllable. Hl is the sound of Welsh ll: put your tongue where you'd say l, and blow. Th is a t with a puff of air.
Word by word
- Nonyana no-NYA-na: bird
- e bona eh BO-na: it sees
- ka ka: with
- mahlo MA-hlo: eyes
- motho MOO-toh: person
- o bona oo BO-na: he or she sees
- kelello keh-LEL-lo: mind
The e and o in front of bona change to match what is doing the seeing. Sesotho verbs agree with their noun like that.
Where it was found
Sesotho calls a proverb a maele. This one is from a list of Lesotho proverbs on lesotho.co.ls.
How to recognise Southern Sotho
Sesotho is a Bantu language written in the plain Latin alphabet, with letter pairs like hl, tl, ts, tj and ny. Its closest relatives are Tswana and Northern Sotho, and spelling helps tell them apart: Sesotho writes ho for 'to' where Tswana writes go, and Tswana uses kg and tlh far more often. In Lesotho, Sesotho spelling also uses o and e where you might expect u and i.
About the Southern Sotho language
Southern Sotho, or Sesotho, is a Bantu language spoken by around 6 million people as a first language in Lesotho and South Africa, and by many more as a second language. It is an official language in both countries. Its spelling differs between the two: the same word can be spelled differently in Lesotho, which kept an older missionary orthography, and in South Africa, which reformed it.
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