As the world becomes a global village, many people are losing touch with their roots and some can no longer speak their mother tongue.
But people who speak Sesotho sa Leboa, more commonly known as Northern Sotho or Sepedi, needn’t fear losing their language: it’s been captured in South Africa’s first online, bilingual Sesotho sa Leboa/English dictionary.
David Joffe, representative of TshwaneDJe, the human language technology development company which created the dictionary, says there is a serious lack of decent learning and reference materials for South Africa’s 11 official languages.
As a result, many South Africans are only familiar with commonly used phrases like ‘batho pele” (people first), which the government has adopted as its slogan for service standards.
‘To help fill these needs – and with the hope of promoting a truly multilingual culture among all people of South Africa – TshwaneDJe has created the online, bilingual Sesotho sa Leboa/English dictionary,” he says.
The dictionary, which took four years to compile, contains 25 000 entries and is the biggest online reference for an African language.
The dictionary is free of charge and is accessible on the web at www.africanlanguages.com as well as in print.
Sesotho sa Leboa is spoken by approximately four million South Africans (about 10% of the population) in Limpopo, Gauteng and Mpumalanga. – African Eye News Service