SESOTHO VOICE OVER TALENTS NATIVE SPEAKERS - PAGE 1

Sotho language
Native to: Lesotho
Native speakers: 5 million
Writing system: Latin (Sotho alphabet)
Capital city: Maseru
Currency: Lesotho loti (LSL)
Dialing code: +266
Country code: LS
Population: 2,067,000
Southern Sotho is one of the official languages of South Africa and is a member of the Bantu/Nguni family of languages. It is spoken by about 5 million people in Lesotho, Botswana, South Africa, Namibia and Zambia. The first written form of Sesotho was devised by Thomas Arbousset, Eugene Casalis and Constant Gosselin, French missionaries of the Paris Evangelical Mission who arrived in Lesotho in 1833. The first grammar book, Etudes sur la Langue Sechuana by Casalis, was published in 1841. Sotho is a Southern Bantu language, belonging to the Niger–Congo language family within the Sotho languages branch of Zone S (S.30). It is most closely related to other major languages in the Sotho–Tswana language group: Tswana (Setswana), the Northern Sotho languages (Sesotho sa Leboa), Kgalagari (SheKgalagari) and Lozi (Silozi). Sesotho is, and has always been, the name of the language in the language itself, and this term has come into wider use in English since the 1980s, especially in South African English and in Lesotho. Sesotho is the autoglottonym or name of the language used by its native speakers as defined by the United Nations. Sotho is the heteroglottonym. It is also sometimes referred to as Southern Sotho, principally to distinguish it from Northern Sotho. The Sotho languages are in turn closely related to other Southern Bantu language groups, including the Ven?a, Tsonga, Tonga, and Nguni languages, and possibly also the Makua languages of Tanzania and Mozambique.