Notes for Northen Sotho beginners.

1. Northen Sotho notes.

2. Things that needs to be understood first.
• Five pronouns: absolute pronouns, radical pronouns, quantitative
pronouns, possessive pronouns and demonstrative pronouns.
• The morphological structure of the above mentioned pronouns.
• Two different copulatives: identifying and descriptive copula.

3. Copulatives.
• Copulatives are a group of words which expresses variant meanings
and it consists of SUBJECT, COPULA and COMPLEMENT. The copula
are used to identify and to describe the complement.
• IDENTIFYING COPULA (3RD person)
• The identifying copula is ke (it) is, are, and am in positive and ga se in
negative. There are no verbs involved.
• These copulas indicate that the subject and the complement (person
or thing) are identical, in other words they are one and the same
thing.

4. In most cases the prefix of the subject and the prefix of the
complement are from the same class.
• SUBJECT (person/thing) COPULA COMPLEMENT(
person/thing)
• Monna ke morutiši
• The man is a teacher
• Monna ga se moalafi
• The man is not a healer
• Bana ke
baithuti.

5. IDENTIFYING COPULAS (1ST ( nna (i) rena (we) AND 2ND PERSONS ( wena
(you), lena (you plural) )
Subject copula complement
• Nna ke morutiši I am a teacher
• Nna ga ke morutiši I am not a teacher
• Rena re barutiši we are teachers
• Rena ga re barutiši we are not teachers
• Wena o morutiši you are a teacher
• Wena ga o morutiši you are not teachers
• Lena le barutiši you (plural) are teachers
• Lena ga le barutiši you are not teachers.

6. • N.B when you convert the positive to negative in 1st and 2nd person
you add the negative morpheme of ga before the copula or after the
subject unlike 3rd person where you replace your copula with the
negative morpheme of ga se.
• Descriptive copula.
• The decretive copula is used when the complement expresses some
or other characteristics, position, locality or quality of the subject, in
other words the subject and the complement are not identical. The
descriptive copula is the subject morpheme of the noun used as a
subject.

7. PRONOUNS AND THEIR MORPHOLOGICAL STRUCTURE.
• A pronoun can function in three ways, it may function as a replacement of a noun
in a sentence, it may function with a noun to express emphatic meaning, and it
may also act as a subject or an object in a sentence.
• PERSONAL PRONOUNS.
• Personal pronoun is a pronoun in a sentence that refers to a specific person or
object / a personal pronoun is a noun that is associated primarily with a particular
person.
• 1st person singular nna (i)
• Nna ke ja bogobe.
• 1st person plural rena (we)
• Rena re ja bogobe.
• 2nd person singular wena (you)
• Wena o ja bogobe.
• 2nd person plural lena (you

8. Learning a new language is hard, but it is not if you are
determined.