protest at the National University of Lesotho. The sign translates: "If you do not listen to women, we will lose patience with you." (2008) Except for faint lexical variation within Lesotho, and for marked lexical variation between the Lesotho/
Free State variety and that of the large urban townships to the north (such as
Soweto) due to heavy borrowing from neighbouring languages, there is no discernible dialect variation in this language. However, one point that seems to often confuse authors who attempt to study the dialectology of Sesotho is the term
Basotho, which can variously mean "
Sotho–Tswana speakers", "Southern Sotho and
Northern Sotho speakers", "Sesotho speakers", and "residents of Lesotho." The
Nguni language Phuthi has been heavily influenced by Sesotho; its speakers have mixed Nguni and Sotho–Tswana ancestry. It seems that it is sometimes treated erroneously as a dialect of Sesotho called "Sephuthi." However, Phuthi is mutually unintelligible with standard Sesotho and thus cannot in any sense be termed a dialect of it. Additionally, being derived from a language or dialect very closely related to modern Sesotho, the
Zambian Sotho–Tswana language
Lozi is also sometimes cited as a modern dialect of Sesotho named
Serotse or
Sekololo. The oral history of the Basotho and Northern Sotho peoples (as contained in their
liboko) states that 'Mathulare, a daughter of the chief of the
Bafokeng nation (an old and respected people), was married to chief Tabane of the (Southern)
Bakgatla (a branch of the
Bahurutse, who are one of the most ancient of the Sotho–Tswana tribes), and bore the founders of five tribes:
Bapedi (by Mopedi),
Makgolokwe (by Kgetsi),
Baphuthing (by Mophuthing, and later the Mzizi of
Dlamini, connected with the present-day
Ndebele),
Batlokwa (by Kgwadi), and
Basia (by Mosia). These were the first peoples to be called "Basotho", before many of their descendants and other peoples came together to form
Moshoeshoe I's nation in the early 19th century. The situation is even further complicated by various historical factors, such as members of parent clans joining their descendants or various clans calling themselves by the same names (because they honour the same legendary ancestor or have the same totem). An often repeated story is that when the modern Basotho nation was established by King
Moshoeshoe I, his own "dialect" Sekwena was chosen over two other popular variations Setlokwa and Setaung and that these two still exist as "dialects" of modern Sesotho. The inclusion of Setlokwa in this scenario is confusing, as the modern language named "Setlokwa" is a Northern Sesotho language spoken by descendants of the same Batlokwa whose attack on the young chief Moshoeshoe's settlement during
Lifaqane (led by the famous widow
Mmanthatisi) caused them to migrate to present-day Lesotho. On the other hand, Doke & Mofokeng claims that the tendency of many Sesotho speakers to say for example
ke ronngwe instead of
ke romilwe when forming the perfect of the passive of verbs ending in
-ma (as well as forming their perfects with
-mme instead of
-mile ) is "a relic of the extinct Tlokwa dialect". ==Geographic distribution==