Talk:Tsonga language

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People, it's "Xitsonga", not "Chitsonga". Where does this idea come from? Do not confuse yourselves. User:ZyXoas

Allmost all Google hits for "Chitsonga" are either connected to Wikiped or talk about some Shadreck Chitsonga from Malawi. Is someone willing to expose this fallacy? Unfortuanately I can't -Z

As I edit this page, I refer to myself as a Shangaan person who speaks Xitsonga. All the Shangaan people living in South Africa, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Swaziland and anywhere else in Southern Africa, the recorded history shows that they came from Gaza Province of Mozambique. The wars and other indigenous reasons are some of the reasons why people find themselves with different dialects different from others. Every language of the world is, in one way or the other affected by this. Take a simple example of American and British English. However one may justify that American English is in its own, the fact remains, England has the origin of the language. Therefore, Gaza Mozambique reflects the true origin of every Shangaan person all over Southern Africa, dialects were/are the results of the geographical dominance. -(I live in the Limpopo Province of South Africa, my father was born in 1929 (was the last born in family of 5) and my grandfather (died in 1972) was born in 1889 in Gaza Mozambique. One may argue that Giyani never existed in 1889 and those who argue may need to review their ancestral clan or read what was recorded by "missionaries". It's a pride to know where you come from. -- Vongani Leonard Nkwinika

"Chitsonga" comes from the Portuguese spelling of the language. There are many differences in spelling between the language as written in South African and in Mozambique. For example, the word "god" has been written as "chicuembu" in Mozambique and "xikwembu" in South Africa. Most publications in Shangaan do seem to come from South Africa and so those spellings are more prevalent. [visitor]

"Chitsonga" is not totally incorrect. One thing to keep in mind is that the "xitsonga" language is a continuum. Therefore, while the South African speakers use "xi" as a suffix as in "Xikwembu", the fact is that in other dialects, esp. in the Hlengwe and Tshwa dialects of Zimbabwe and Mozambique, the word is "Chikwembu", and the Portuguese spelling of the word would thus be "Chicuembu"(even tho Portuguese "ch" = English "sh") Examples: RSA Xikwembu xi rhandza vanhu va xona - God loves his people In Zimbabwe: Chikwembu chirhanda vanhu vachona - God loves his people - Giyani

Clicks section unclear

Hello,

I find the section that describes borrowed words with clicks from Zulu and Ndebele confusing. Is it correct to infer that all clicks in such words are merged into a single click phoneme? If so, which one? --babbage 17:05, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Pronouns table

I tried to fix the table so that the data went into it neatly; however, if I have inadvertently changed any of it so that it now shows misinformation, please correct it ASAP. 4.243.221.190 02:25, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Inconsistency

The total speakers number is inconsistent with the text of the article. Lavateraguy 18:34, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Numbers are available at Ethnologue Lavateraguy 18:36, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

I wonder

The prefix "Xi", which sounds "sh" in many South African languages comes from the Portuguese phonetic table but it's also important to note how it changes within various contents depending on the vowel before it. For instance, check the English translation of the word "shampoo" into Portuguese and you will find something like "xampu". If Tsonga had to borrow the word Shampoo, how would you spell it? To me the Portuguese version sounds closer to Xitsonga "Xampu". We also call wine "vhinyo" and the Portuguese version is "vino" Spanish "vinho". We borrow words in order to make a language grow. So, Chisonga, Chitsonga, Xitsonga, Gitonga, Tsonga are all correct, but officially we use Xitsonga in South Africa. Nobody is confusing anybody unless you talk Tsonga in the most biased manner. The most influential language to Xitsonga is Portuguese and I'll suggest we drive our discussion towards that in order to find out why words are spelt the way they are in Tsonga. Thanks for the comment below, but you can only discuss language formations if you know your history (19 June 2013).

I dont think Vongani Leonard Nkwinika's quote should be part of the Xitsonga Article. I think it should be moved to this talk page. --Thuvack | ^talk 16:08, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Tsonga language template

If you are a native speaker of Tsonga then you can help translate this template into your own language:

tsoRirimi ra manana ra mutirhisi loyi i XiTsonga.

Edit

--Amazonien (talk) 21:15, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Both 165.165.108.79 (talk) 20:20, 10 August 2024 (UTC)

Both un tsonga 165.165.108.79 (talk) 20:21, 10 August 2024 (UTC)

Tsonga language - created?

Is this article saying Tsonga is a conlang? Surely it's a natural language. I would like to see some sources for the first paragraph. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Smashhoof2 (talk • contribs) 20:37, 21 March 2017 (UTC)

unclear about SOV word order

"The grammar is generally typical of Bantu languages with a subject–verb–object order. The structure changes to subject—object—verb when addressing another person" – that last part is a very ambiguous. From the examples, it looks like it should be rewritten to: "The structure changes to subject—object—verb when the subject is not in the first person." (although does it only happen with pronouns?) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Unhammer (talk • contribs) 14:54, 21 August 2017 (UTC)

Rhotic/Trill?

Are you sure that Tsonga /r/ is realised as a trill? User: Kbb2 (you know, many linguistic articles don't properly describe the exact realisation of a rhotic just for convenience's sake) -PerkeleenHullu (talk) 15:43, 12 October 2019 (UTC)

@PerkeleenHullu: If it's something else then feel free to change the label. I'm not a fan of using the word "rhotic", it can mean so many things that it's almost meaningless. Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 13:50, 16 October 2019 (UTC)

@Kbb2: Ea, I ken not tbh: I'm not an expert on Tsonga or what... I just wanted to be sure -PerkeleenHullu (talk) 16:03, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

@PerkeleenHullu: It is a trill. I have the source I used to create the phonology chart. Fdom5997 (talk) 21:20, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

Status of Changana

In one place in the article it says "What is commonly referred to as "Shangana/Changana" is not a recognized language in South Africa and is not a dialect that falls within the Xitsonga language group, as its distinctiveness stems mainly from the use of the Nguni language and grammar", but in another it refers to Changana as a dialect. Moreover, Xichangana redirects to the Tsonga page. How can it be that it doesn't fall under the Xitsonga group? wleightond 21:29, 10 November 2019 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Wleightond (talk • contribs)

Tonga under Tsonga?

The article lists Tonga as being a under Tsonga, being a speaker of both since a child, I think this not accurate. Even though they share some words for they are both bantu, the languages are not inteligeble. They're not written, nor spoken in the same way by any means.

This is not to say the article is wrong in this part, but I'd like if possible for someone to cite a credible source of this, then perhaps I'd be convinced. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dareenzo (talk • contribs) 17:43, 9 April 2020 (UTC)

You know that i can't speak Tsonga so already i lost this game

Tsonga 105.245.0.151 (talk) 18:55, 13 April 2024 (UTC)

Converting the proverbs section to oral literature with references...?

I've been adding oral literature sections to African language articles (see my user page for a list), and when I got here to work on the Tsonga article, I saw there was a huge table of unsourced proverbs. I looked and cannot find any published source for this list (although it has now been copied from Wikipedia to various other webpages). I'm a newbie here at Wikipedia, so I'm not going to take down the proverbs table because I know somebody worked on it in good faith, although I see it has been flagged as liable to removal. What I'll do for now is leave here a list of the references that I was going to use to write an Oral literature section for Tsonga the way I've been doing for the other African language articles. Normally I would provide some contextual commentary for these references, along with some sample short texts from the riddles and proverbs. These references all contain both Tsonga texts and English translations, covering proverbs, riddles, songs, and folktales. These items are all available at the Internet Archive and/or at JSTOR. I'm glad to write up the oral literature section if/when someone with more experience and authority can decide what to do about the table of proverbs that already exists here in the article. Alternatively, I could write up an oral literature section SEPARATE from the existing proverb table, although I suspect somebody needs to decide to remove the unsourced proverb table...?

(updated Aug. 15 2024: I have removed the reference list here; they are now all incorporated into the article)

Laurakgibbs (talk) 18:33, 14 August 2024 (UTC)

Maybe combine the two and put the template {{citation needed} next to each one that isn’t cited. On African language wikipedias, people can add material like this without citations due to no oral citations existing as of yet, so it was probably done in that manner Kowal2701 (talk) 19:11, 14 August 2024 (UTC)

PERFECT. I do not know about these different kinds of templates and how to use them, so that is what I will do, and I'm very glad to know about this, especially for oral tradition content. I ran into a similar problem but on a smaller scale for another article; now I am better prepared going forward! I will write up the oral literature section here as my Wikipedia project for tomorrow. Thanks again! Laurakgibbs (talk) 19:16, 14 August 2024 (UTC)

Tone

In the riddles section I included a reference to an article about "tone riddles," which led me to notice that there is no mention of tone in this article, but Tsonga is a tonal language (from what I could tell looking at the references, it is a two-tone, H/L language...?). Someone with expertise in Tsonga or Bantu languages or African tonal languages generally could help by adding a section on tone in Tsonga; I am not qualified to do that. Laurakgibbs (talk) 19:06, 15 August 2024 (UTC)