Nomina Africana 2017 31(1): 51–58
Litšepiso Matlosa, Department of African Languages, National University of Lesotho, Roma, Lesotho
Email: llmatlosa@gmail.com
Abstract
The importance of giving names to human beings has been widely documented. A person’s name is part of his or her identity. In order to keep a person’s identity intact, it is important to spell and pronounce his or her name properly. This paper argues that Sesotho orthography makes it difficult for Basotho and people from other countries to pronounce some Sesotho names correctly and, in the process, a person’s identity is compromised. The paper focuses on the written names that have the potential of referring to two different persons. For instance, Sesotho orthography uses the symbol “e” to represent both vowel /e/ and /ɛ/. As a result the name Letšela is written the same way when it refers to “One who crosses” and also when it refers to “One who pours”. This poses a challenge to a reader who would not know which pronunciation the writer had in mind. From the pragmatic point of view, the paper argues that the reader is likely to come up with a pronunciation of a name he or she has knowledge of. Additionally, the reader is likely to provide a pronunciation that was given in a discourse of which he or she was part where such a name was mentioned. Although we cannot ignore the political and cultural factors associated with orthographies of individual countries, the paper proposes the adoption of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), specifically for Sesotho vowels because they seem to play a critical part in the way names are written and pronounced.
Introduction
The importance of names, be they place, object and even personal names, is discussed every other year in the conferences organised by the Naming Society of Southern Africa. In as far as personal names are concerned, it is generally agreed that a person’s name distinguishes him/her from others (EkanjumeIlongo 2012, 2). It is the single factor that sets him/her apart from the rest of the world. Deluzain (2016) correctly explains that names are part of every culture and they are of enormous importance to both the person who receives the name and to the societies that give them. Keeping this in mind, names are not given to individuals for the sake of naming. Great caution is exercised in bestowing the name (Ekanjume-Ilongo 2012, 2). Among the Basotho, naming has always been the responsibility of the elders of the family. Naming of a new-born child depends on several factors such as cultural beliefs, practices, customs and circumstances surrounding the birth. However, it is important to note that for some Basotho today, naming a child after the elderly is no longer relevant. In the families of those Basotho who hold this view, parents are given the opportunity to name their own children. In such instances the choice of the name is based on factors such as the parents’ feelings about the birth of the child, the physical features of the child itself, influential people and role models in the society that the parents may want their children to emulate. Sesotho names such as Palesa “flower” mainly reflects the way the parent sees her child. Similarly, names such as Basetsana “young ladies” may be given to children not necessarily for their meanings, but also because of the well-known celebrity Basetsana who many parents admire.
All languages of the world have a system of rules for how to spell a spoken word. This is known as orthography. Muangi, Njoroge and Mose (2013, 120) point out the need for properly designed African orthographies. In their view, such orthographies can play a pivotal role in promoting their use in all spheres of life and contributing immensely to African socio-economic development. There is no denying the fact that African languages, Sesotho included, were reduced to writing by missionaries. As a result, as Mahlangu (2016, 124) points out, the orthographies of individual African languages were modelled on European orthographies. It is also a fact that these missionaries themselves did not speak these languages. In Msimang’s (1998, 169) view, since the missionaries were “dealing with foreign languages … with little knowledge of their history, genesis, or linguistic or political boundaries, the transmutation and codification of such languages was marred by a number of discrepancies”.
Despite the discrepancies in the original recordings, many African languages have retained the missionary designs. For instance, although the Sesotho spoken in South Africa is similar to the one spoken in Lesotho, these two countries use different orthographies. Attempts to harmonise the two orthographies which started as early as 1927 were always met with resistance, particularly from Lesotho (Msimang 1998; Machobane and Mokitimi, 1998). According to Machobane and Mokitimi (1998), as far as Sesotho is concerned, from as early as 1906 when the issue of orthography was discussed, the bone of contention included: (a) the representation of vowels, (b) the use of semi-vowels, and (c) the use of “d”.
Although a number of studies on Sesotho orthography have been carried out (Msimang 1998; Machobane and Mokitimi 1998; Machobane, Matlosa and Mokitimi 2003; Thamae 2007), none of them focuses on personal names. The present study discusses the problems posed by the orthography in relation to reading personal names. Specifically, it aims to highlight some of the challenges that people face when they have to read and pronounce Sesotho names that have the possibility of being pronounced differently. It is common knowledge that it is not easy to correctly read and pronounce people’s names, especially if those names are for people from a different language from that of the reader or speaker. For instance, the Sesotho name Limpho “gifts” is written with /l/ but it is pronounced as Dimpho with a /d/. This information is not available to non-Sesotho speakers, especially those who have never been to Lesotho. As a result, they unknowingly pronounce names such as Limpho with /l/ instead of /d/. Pronouncing one’s name wrongly, does not only negatively impact on the identity of the owner, but it also affects the credibility of the reader. Therefore, the study argues that the way speech sounds are represented in Sesotho orthography, particularly vowels which are central in the pronunciation of names, contributes to people’s names being wrongly pronounced. Additionally, the fact that up to today in Lesotho, from pre-school to high school learners are still taught that Sesotho has five vowels, with the exclusion of /ɛ/ and /ɔ/, does not help the situation. Although these two vowels are not reflected in Sesotho orthography, they are part of the spoken language.