Sepedi (Northern Sotho) Alphabet

By the Unicode CLDR list, the Northern Sotho alphabet is A B D E Ê F G H I J K L M N O Ô P R S Š T U W X Y. Compared with English, C, Q, V and Z are missing: native words do not need them, and borrowed words are respelled to fit Sepedi sounds, the way school became sekolo. Syllables end in a vowel or a nasal, so words read evenly, as in Thobela, Dumela and Sepedi itself.

Much of the work is done by letter pairs and groups rather than by extra letters. kg is a rough sound at the back of the mouth, as in dikgomo (cattle); hl is a breathy l, as in hlano (five); tlh, ny and ng each stand for one sound; ph, th and kh are p, t and k with a puff of air, not the English f and th; ts, tš and tšh are the ts, ch and breathy ch sounds; and bj, as in bjang (how), is a sound of its own. Long vowels are written double, which is why learners drill words with aa, ee, ii and oo.

Š: how Sepedi writes the sh sound

The letter that makes Sepedi spelling recognisable at a glance is š, s with a caron (háček), the same letter Czech and Slovak use. It is pronounced like English sh: go šoma (to work), mošomo (work, a job), mošemane (boy), mošate (the royal homestead) and šupa (seven). After t it makes the ch sound, so letšatši (sun, day) has two of them and tšhelete (money) begins with one.

Southern Sotho and Tswana are written without the caron, so the same word for money is chelete or tjhelete in Southern Sotho. Typing a plain s for š is a spelling mistake in Sepedi, and people who cannot reach the letter sometimes write sh instead, which is why "how to type sh in Sepedi" is a question people ask. The real answer is to type š itself; the methods are below.

Ê and ô: the circumflex vowels

Sepedi has more vowel sounds than the five vowel letters: e and o each come in a closed and an open version. The circumflex marks the open one, ê (close to the e in English bed) and ô (close to the o in English law), while plain e and o are the closed, tighter sounds. Tswana uses the same two letters for the same purpose.

In everyday writing, on signs, in messages and in most newspapers, the circumflex is usually left off and readers tell the words apart from context. It turns up in dictionaries, school books and language teaching, and wherever a writer wants to show exactly how a word is said. CLDR counts both letters as part of the Northern Sotho alphabet, so they are in the grid with their capitals Ê and Ô.

How to type š, ê and ô on a laptop, Mac and phone

On Windows, hold Alt and type on the number pad: Alt+0154 for š, Alt+0138 for Š, Alt+0234 for ê, Alt+0202 for Ê, Alt+0244 for ô and Alt+0212 for Ô. On a laptop without a number pad, Microsoft Word accepts the Unicode code followed by Alt+X: type 0161 then Alt+X for š, 0160 for Š. The US-International layout gives ê and ô (^ then e or o) but has no caron, so for š use the Alt code, the emoji and symbol panel (Windows key + .) or copy it from this page.

On a Mac, hold down the s key and pick š from the accent menu, or switch to the ABC Extended input source and press Option+V, then s. Option+I, then e or o, gives ê and ô on the standard layout. On iPhone and Android, hold s and slide to š, and hold e or o for ê and ô. In HTML the entities are š Š ê and ô. Sepedi is quoted with the same curly marks as English, “…” and ‘…’.

Where Sepedi is spoken

In South Africa’s 2022 census, 5,972,255 people aged 1+ reported Sepedi as the language most often spoken in their household; Sepedi is one of the official languages 🇿🇦. Its heartland is Limpopo province, around Polokwane and Sekhukhune, and it is widely spoken in Gauteng and Mpumalanga as well. The name Sepedi comes from the Bapedi (one person is a Mopedi), whose kingdom was centred on the Sekhukhune area; the standard written language is based mainly on their dialect, while Sesotho sa Leboa, Sotho of the North, covers the whole group of related varieties, which also includes Khelobedu. Money is the South African rand, written with a capital R before the amount: R50.

Northern Sotho belongs to the Sotho-Tswana family of Bantu languages with Southern Sotho (Sesotho) and Tswana (Setswana), and speakers of the three understand each other to a large degree; the differences show plainly in spelling, above all in š. Limpopo neighbours Tsonga and Venda are also official languages, and Zulu is also widely spoken across Gauteng. See the Southern Sotho, Tswana, Tsonga, Venda and Zulu collections for their letters, and the South Africa collection for the country's flag, food and other emoji. Pedi music has its own tradition too: kiba, played with reed pipes and drums 🪘 at celebrations.