Phuthi language

Phuthi
Síphùthì or Siphuthi
Pronunciation[sípʰʊːtʰɪ]
Native toLesotho, South Africa
EthnicityPhuthi people
Native speakers
(20,000 cited 1999)[1]
Language codes
ISO 639-3–
Glottologphut1246
S.404[2]
ELPSiphuthi
Linguasphere99-AUT-fc
Phuthi is classified as Definitely Endangered by the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger
[3]
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Phuthi (Síphùthì)[4] is a Nguni Bantu language spoken in southern Lesotho and areas in South Africa adjacent to the same border.[5] The closest substantial living relative of Phuthi is Swati (or Siswati), spoken in Eswatini and the Mpumalanga province of South Africa. Although there is no contemporary sociocultural or political contact, Phuthi is linguistically part of a historic dialect continuum with Swati. Phuthi is heavily influenced by the surrounding Sesotho and Xhosa languages, but retains a distinct core of lexicon and grammar not found in either Xhosa or Sesotho, and found only partly in Swati to the north.

The documentary origins of Phuthi can be traced to Bourquin (1927), but in other oblique references more than 100 years from the present (Ellenberger 1912). Until recently, the language has been very poorly documented with respect to its linguistic properties. The only significant earlier study (but with very uneven data, and limited coherent linguistic assumptions) is Godfrey Mzamane (1949).

  1. ^ Cite error: The named reference Donnelly was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  2. ^ Jouni Filip Maho, 2009. New Updated Guthrie List Online
  3. ^ Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger (Report) (3rd ed.). UNESCO. 2010. p. 37.
  4. ^ The second and third vowels in this word Síphùthì are both superclose. In the adapted IPA needed to represent Sesotho vowels, subscript commas are used for transcribing superclose vowels. Such superclose vowels would be represented in the same way in the phonetic transcription of Phuthi (but are given as ⟨î û⟩ in the proposed Phuthi orthography).
  5. ^ Basic historical, linguistic and geographical information about Phuthi is found in the Donnelly (1999) reference.