Sotho language

Sotho
Sotho
Southern Sotho
Sesotho
Pronunciation	[sɪ̀sʊ́tʰʊ̀]
Native to	Lesotho; South Africa; Zimbabwe;
Ethnicity	Basotho
Native speakers	(5.6 million cited 2001–2011); 7.9 million L2 speakers in South Africa (2002)
Language family	Niger–Congo? Atlantic–Congo Volta-Congo Benue–Congo Bantoid Southern Bantoid Bantu Southern Bantu Sotho–Tswana Sotho; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ;
Dialects	Phuthi; Taung;
Writing system	Latin (Sesotho alphabet); Sotho Braille; Ditema tsa Dinoko
Signed forms	Signed Sotho
Official status
Official language in	Lesotho; South Africa; Zimbabwe;
Regulated by	Pan South African Language Board
Language codes
ISO 639-1	st
ISO 639-2	sot
ISO 639-3	sot
Glottolog	sout2807
Guthrie code	S.33
Linguasphere	99-AUT-ee incl. varieties 99-AUT-eea to 99-AUT-eee
	Proportion of the South African population that speaks Sotho at home; 0–20% 20–40% 40–60% 60–80% 80–100%

Sotho (/ˈsuːtuː/), also known as Sesotho (/sɪˈsuːtuː, sə-/), Southern Sotho, or Sesotho sa Borwa, is a Southern Bantu language spoken in Lesotho, as its national language, and South Africa, where it is an official language.

Like all Bantu languages, Sesotho is an agglutinative language, using numerous affixes and derivational and inflexional rules to build complete words.