Sotho Concords

Sotho Concords

Notes:

• The orthography used in this and related articles is that of South Africa, not Lesotho. For a discussion of the differences between the two see the notes on Sesotho orthography.
• Hovering the mouse cursor over most italic Sesotho text should reveal an IPA pronunciation key (excluding tones). Note that often when a section discusses formatives, affixes, or vowels it may be necessary to view the IPA to see the proper conjunctive word division and vowel qualities.

Just as the Sesotho sentence centres around the Sesotho noun, the noun is made to "concòrd" ("agree") with the verbs, pronouns, and qualificatives describing it by a set of Sesotho noun concords.

The noun concord system is the most striking feature of the Bantu language family. The exact number of concord types differs from language to language, and traces of this system (and the noun class system) are even found in some Niger–Congo languages outside the narrow Bantu family.