Sesotho, known in English as Sotho or Southern Sotho, is a Bantu language of the Sotho-Tswana group. It is an official language of both Lesotho, where it is spoken by nearly the whole population, and South Africa, where most speakers live in the Free State and Gauteng. First-language speakers number over five million. Sesotho is closely related to Setswana and Northern Sotho, also called Sepedi, and speakers of the three can generally understand one another. The language is written in the Latin alphabet, but with a complication: Lesotho and South Africa use different spelling conventions for the same language, so the same word can look different on either side of the border. Sesotho has a notable written tradition, including Thomas Mofolo's novel Chaka, translated into many languages.
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