Southern Bantu origins as represented by Xhosa and Tswana

Abstract

Two Southern Bantu languages, namely, Tswana and Xhosa, have been selected as being representative of Zone S. Various aspects, including phonological, morphophonological, morphological and lexical have been considered. Taking Guthrie's classification, topogram and comparative series into account, it has been deduced that, while it can safely be established that Southern Bantu can be directly related to the Eastern Branch of Proto Bantu, it nevertheless also has correspondences with the Western Branch. One of the major differences between Xhosa and Tswana is the vowel system, with the five vowel system of Xhosa being more typical of the Eastern Branch and the seven vowel system of Tswana being more typically Western. Nevertheless, it is postulated that both groups are descended from two closely related dialects of Eastern Bantu and moved southwards in two streams corresponding with Huffmann's Moloko (Sotho) and Blackburn (Nguni) migrations.