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Tswana or Setswana (S31) is classified as: Niger-Congo, Atlantic-Congo, Volta-Congo, Benue-Congo, Bantoid, Southern, Narrow Bantu, Central, S, Sotho-Tswana (S.30), Tswana (Webbook and Ethnologue)
Tswana / Setswana is spoken in Botswana, South Africa, and neighboring areas of Zimbabwe and Namibia. (Webbook, with modifications)
According to Ethnologue:
Although Northern Sotho, Southern Sotho, and Tswana are considered to be three separate languages they are largely interintelligible. (Webbook and Ethnologue)
According to Ethnologue:
Tswana is, according to Heine (1970), "next to English the official language of Botswana." (Webbook)
Notes from Ethnologue about Tswana:
There is a standardized Latin based orthography. (Webbook)
[update! - are there differences of orthography between Botswana and South Africa?]
The following sources give alphabets for Tswana but without explanation:
The table on page 26 of "Alphabetical ordering of multilingual terminological and lexicographical data represented in the Latin alphabet" (ISO/FDIS 12199:1999(E)) http://anubis.dkuug.dk/jtc1/sc22/wg20/docs/n720.pdf indicates that 3 diacritic characters are used (no explanation): ê ô š [need verification & more info]
A sample text is shown on the "Language Museum" site: http://www.language-museum.com/t/tswana.htm
Standard Latin fonts should suffice.
The South African language site "Batho Portal" http://www.sediba.org.za/ has a section on & in "Setswana."
Universal Declaration of Human Rights: http://www.unhchr.ch/udhr/lang/tsw.htm
Wikipedia in Tswana at http://tn.wikipedia.org/ (not much content as of 5-2007)
Translate.org.za has localised in Tswana (South Africa):
Microsoft has localised Windows XP in Setswana (South Africa): http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=0db2e8f9-79c4-4625-a07a-0cc1b341be7c&displaylang=tn
Not aware of any effort to localise Tswana software for a Botswana locale.
Tswana
The Local Language Speech Technology Initiative (LLSTI) http://www.llsti.org/ has begun a text-to-speech (TTS) project with CSIR South Africa for Tswana.
Botswana page about Setswana http://www.botswana-tourism.gov.bw/culture_and_his/language.html
Translate.org.za http://translate.org.za
AfricanLanguages.com "Setswana (Tswana)" page http://www.africanlanguages.com/setswana/
This is a cross-border Southern African language that could have localized versions for Botswana as well as South Africa - though the differences apart from a few minor locale issues would probably be minor. In any event, if they are based on a common version - in this case the one done by Translate.org.za - that would make it easier for the broader user community.
One basic need is a reference on the Tswana orthographies in Botswana and South Africa (differences?)
Dwyer, David (1997), Webbook of African Languages, http://www.isp.msu.edu/AfrLang/hiermenu.html (page on "Sotho/Tswana," http://www.isp.msu.edu/AfrLang/Sotho_root.html )
SIL International, Ethnologue: Languages of the World, "Tswana," http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=tsn
SIL International, "ISO 639 Code Tables," http://www.sil.org/iso639-3/codes.asp
U.S. Library of Congress, "ISO 639.2: Codes for the Representation of Names of Languages: Alpha-3 codes arranged alphabetically by the English name of language," http://www.loc.gov/standards/iso639-2/php/English_list.php
Wikipedia, "Tswana language," http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tswana_language
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