Sotho, the original language of the African nation and one of the eleven official languages of South Africa, may serve as the unofficial international language of the southern African continent. Four million South Africans claim Sotho as their primary language and as many as five million more identify Sotho as their second or third language. Especially common in Johannesburg, Soweto, and Tshwane, Sotho serves as the everyday language in many of the working class neighborhoods.
Businessmen wisely will choose learning Sotho over their nine other options because the majority of their workers probably speak and understand it.
Learning Sotho is relatively simple, because it includes linguistic jargon for a language that builds complete words from relatively few roots and a lot of prefixes and suffixes and despite its widespread use across South Africa, Sotho has very few dialectical differences.
