Oromo language
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{{language |name=Oromo |nativename=Afaan Oromoo |pronunciation=/ʌfɑːn ɔrɔmoː/ |states=Ethiopia, Kenya |region=Africa |speakers=24-5 million |rank=91 |familycolor=Afro-Asiatic |fam2=Cushitic |fam3=East |iso1=om|iso2=orm |lc1=orm|ld1=Oromo (generic)|ll1=none |lc2=gax|ld2=Borana-Arsi-Guji |lc3=gaz|ld3=West Central Oromo |lc4=ggh|ld4=Garreh-Ajuran |lc5=hae|ld5=Eastern Oromo |lc6=orc|ld6=Orma |lc7=ssn|ld7=Sanye}}
Oromo, known in Oromo as Afaan Oromoo or Oromiffa(a) and sometimes in other languages as variant spellings of these names (Oromigna, Afan Oromo, etc.), is an Afro-Asiatic language, and the most widely spoken of the Cushitic sub-phylum. As with Arabic, some (including SIL) view it as a set of closely related languages, but, at least within Ethiopia, its speakers consider it to be a single language. It is spoken by approximately 24-5 million Oromos and other neighboring nationalities in Ethiopia and in Kenya. Formerly the language and people were often referred to by non-Oromos within Ethiopia as well as by Europeans as Galla, but this term is considered pejorative by the Oromos and is no longer used.
Oromo uses a modified Latin alphabet called Qubee, which was formally adopted in 1991. The Ge'ez abugida was the most commonly used script in the past, though in Ethiopia, writing the Oromo language in any script had been banned by the government of Haile Selassie. With the adoption of Qubee, it is believed more texts were written in the Oromo language between 1991 and 1997 than in the previous 100 years. [1] [2]
The Arabic alphabet has also been used.
Contents |
Speakers, dialects, and language policy
At least 99 percent of Oromo speakers live in Ethiopia, mainly in Oromia region, and most of the remainder live in Kenya. In Somalia there are also about 42,000 speakers of the language.[3] Within Ethiopia, Oromo is the language with the second most first-language speakers (31.6% vs. 32.7% for Amharic).[4] Within Africa, it is the language with the fifth most speakers, after Arabic (assuming the spoken dialects of Arabic are treated as a single language), Swahili, Hausa, and Amharic. Besides first language speakers, a number of members of other ethnicities who are in contact with the Oromos speak Oromo as a second language, for example, the Omotic-speaking Bambassi and the Nilo-Saharan-speaking Kwama in northwestern Oromia.[5]
Varieties of Oromo divide into three main clusters of dialects (data are mainly from Ethnologue[6][7] and Stroomer (1987)Template:Ref num):
- Western (or West Central) Oromo
- Wellega (Wallagga) or Macha (Macca), spoken in northwestern Oromia
- Tulama (Tuulamaa) or Shoa (Shawaa), spoken in north central Oromia and by many people within the city of Addis Ababa (Finfinnee or Shaggar), which is administratively separate from Oromia
- Wollo (Wallo), spoken in a north-south strip east of the city of Wollo, partly in the Oromia zone of Amhara Region and not adjacent to any of the Oromo-speaking areas of central and southern Ethiopia
- Raya (Raayyaa), spoken further north than the Wollo dialect, in an area bounded on the west by Amharic and Tigrinya speakers and on the east by Afar speakers
- Eastern Oromo, spoken in the northeastern part of Oromia, as well as in and around the cities of Harar and Dire Dawa (Dirree Dhawaa), which are administratively separate from Oromia; also called Harar Oromo and Qottu Oromo
- Southern Oromo
- Arsi, spoken around the Arsi zone of central Oromia
- Guji (Gujii), spoken around the Guji zone of south central Oromia
- Borana (Boranaa), spoken in southern Oromia, parts of Eastern Province in Kenya, and parts of Gedo region in Somalia
- Gabra, spoken in the northwestern part of Eastern Province in Kenya
- Garre-Ajuraan, spoken in Mandera and Wajir districts in North Eastern Province in Kenya
- Sakuye, spoken in a region south of Moyale in Eastern Province in Kenya
- Orma (including Munyo), spoken along the Tana River in Coast Province in Kenya
- Waata, spoken in isolated villages along the Indian Ocean in Coast Province in Kenya
Much work remains to be done on Oromo dialects, in particular on their degree of mutual intelligibility. It appears that the most divergent dialects are the southern ones. For example, in these dialects the gender of most nouns is identifiable from the final vowel.Template:Ref num The dialects spoken in Ethiopia and in Kenya differ in terms of what languages they are most likely to borrow words from. In Ethiopia, Oromo has been in contact with Amharic for hundreds of years, and this has resulted in mutual lexical influence. In Kenya, on the other hand, the Oromo dialects have borrowed many words from Swahili or English.
Before the Ethiopian Revolution of 1974, publishing or broadcasting in Oromo was prohibited, and the few works that were published, most notably Onesimos Nesib's translation of the Bible from the late nineteenth century, were written in the Ge'ez (Ethiopic) script. Following the Revolution, the government undertook a literacy campaign in several languages, including Oromo, and publishing and radio broadcasts began in the language. Plans to introduce Oromo instruction in the schools, however, were not realized until the government of Mengistu Haile Mariam was overthrown in 1991, except in regions controlled by the Oromo Liberation Front. With the creation of Oromia under the new system of ethnic regions, it has been possible to introduce Oromo as the medium of instruction in elementary schools throughout the region and as a language of administration within the region.
Within Kenya there has been radio broadcasting in Oromo (in the Borana dialect) on the Voice of Kenya since at least the 1980s.Template:Ref num
Sounds and orthography
Consonant and vowel phonemes
Like most other Ethiopian languages, whether Semitic, Cushitic, or Omotic, Oromo has a a set of ejective consonants, that is, voiceless stops or affricates that are accompanied by glottalization and an explosive burst of air. Oromo has another glottalized phone that is more unusual, an implosive retroflex stop, "dh" in Oromo orthography, a sound that is like an English "d" produced with the tongue curled back slightly and with the air drawn in so that a glottal stop is heard before the following vowel begins.
Oromo has the typical Southern Cushitic set of five short and five long vowels, indicated in the orthography by doubling the five vowel letters. The difference in length is contrastive, for example, hara 'lake', haaraa 'new'. Gemination is also significant in Oromo. That is, consonant length can distinguish words from one another, for example, badaa 'bad', baddaa 'highland'.
In the Oromo alphabet, a single "letter" consists either of a single symbol or a digraph ("ch", "dh", "ny", "ph", "sh"). Gemination is not obligatorily marked for the digraphs, though some writers indicate it by doubling the first symbol: qopphaa'uu 'be prepared'. In the charts below, the International Phonetic Alphabet symbol for a phoneme is shown in brackets where it differs from the Oromo letter. The phonemes /p/, /v/ and /z/ appear in parentheses because they are only found in recent loan words. Note that there have been minor changes in the orthography since it was first adopted: "x" (IPA [t']) was originally represented as "th", and there has been some confusion among authors in the use of "c" and "ch" in representing the phonemes /Template:IPA/ and /Template:IPA/, with some early works using "c" for /Template:IPA/ and "ch" for /Template:IPA/ and even "c" for different phonemes depending on where it appears in a word. This article uses "c" consistently for /Template:IPA/ and "ch" for /Template:IPA/.
| Bilabial/ Labiodental | Alveolar/ Retroflex | Palato-alveolar/ Palatal | Velar | Glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stops | Voiceless | (p) | t | k | ' [[[Template:IPA]]] | |
| Voiced | b | d | g | |||
| Ejective | ph [[[Template:IPA]]] | x [[[Template:IPA]]] | q [[[Template:IPA]]] | |||
| Implosive | dh [[[Template:IPA]]] | |||||
| Affricates | Voiceless | ch [[[Template:IPA]]] | ||||
| Voiced | j [[[Template:IPA]]] | |||||
| Ejective | c [[[Template:IPA]]] | |||||
| Fricatives | Voiceless | f | s | sh [[[Template:IPA]]] | h | |
| Voiced | (v) | (z) | ||||
| Nasals | m | n | ny [[[Template:IPA]]] | |||
| Approximants | w | l | y [[[Template:IPA]]] | |||
| Flap/Trill | r | |||||
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| High | i [[[Template:IPA]]], ii [i:] | u [[[Template:IPA]]], uu [u:] | |
| Mid | e [[[Template:IPA]]], ee [e:] | o [[[Template:IPA]]], oo [o:] | |
| Low | a [[[Template:IPA]]] | aa [[[Template:IPA]]] |
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Grammar
Nouns
Gender
Like other Afro-Asiatic languages, Oromo has two grammatical genders, masculine and feminine, and all nouns belong to either one or the other. Grammatical gender in Oromo enters into the grammar in the following ways:
- Verbs (except for the copula be) agree with their subjects in gender when the subject is third person singular (he or she).
- Third person singular personal pronouns (he, she, it, etc. in English) have the gender of the noun they refer to.
- Adjectives agree with the nouns they modify in gender.
- Some possessive adjectives ("my", "your") agree with the nouns they modify in some dialects.
Except in some southern dialects, there is nothing in the form of most nouns that indicates their gender. A small number of nouns pairs for people, however, end in -eessa (m.) and -eettii (f.), as do adjectives when they are used as nouns: obboleessa 'brother', obboleettii 'sister', dureessa 'the rich one (m.)', hiyyeettii 'the poor one (f.)'. Grammatical gender normally agrees with biological gender for people and animals; thus nouns such as abbaa 'father', ilma 'son', and sangaa 'ox' are masculine, while nouns such as haadha 'mother' and intala 'girl, daughter' are feminine. However, most names for animals do not specify biological gender.
Names of astronomical bodies are feminine: aduu 'sun', urjii 'star'. The gender of other inanimate nouns varies somewhat among dialects.
Number
Oromo has singular and plural, but nouns that refer to multiple entities are not obligatorily plural. That is, if the context is clear, a formally singular noun may refer to multiple entities: nama 'man', nama shan, 'five men'. Another way of looking at this is to treat the "singular" form as unspecified for number.
When it is important to make the plurality of a referent clear, the plural form of a noun is used. Noun plurals are formed through the addition of suffixes. The most common plural suffix is -oota; a final vowel is dropped before the suffix, and in the western dialects, the suffix becomes -ota following a syllable with a long vowel: mana 'house', manoota 'houses', hiriyaa 'friend', hiriyoota 'friends', barsiisaa 'teacher', barsiiso(o)ta 'teachers'. Among the other common plural suffixes are -(w)wan, -een, and -(a)an; the latter two may cause a preceding consonant to be doubled: waggaa 'year', waggaawwan 'years', laga 'river', laggeen 'rivers', ilma 'son', ilmaan 'sons'.
Definiteness
Oromo has no indefinite articles (corresponding to English a, some), but (except in the southern dialects) it indicates definiteness (English the) with suffixes on the noun: -(t)icha for masculine nouns (the ch is geminated though this is not normally indicated in writing) and -(t)ittii for feminine nouns. Vowel endings of nouns are dropped before these suffixes: karaa 'road', karicha 'the road', nama 'man', namicha/namticha 'the man', haroo 'lake', harittii 'the lake'. Note that for animate nouns that can take either gender, the definite suffix may indicate the intended gender: qaalluu 'priest', qaallicha 'the priest (m.)', qallittii 'the priest (f.)'. The definite suffixes appear to be used less often than the in English, and they seem not to co-occur with the plural suffixes.
Case
An Oromo noun has a citation form or base form that is used when the noun is the object of a verb, the object of a preposition or postposition, or a nominal predicative.
- mana 'house', mana binne 'we bought a house'
- hamma 'until', dhuma 'end', hamma dhuma 'until (the) end'
- mana keessa, 'inside (a/the) house'
- inni 'he', barsiisaa 'teacher', inni barsiisaa (dha) 'he is a teacher'
A noun may also appear in one of six other grammatical cases, each indicated by a suffix or the lengthening of the noun's final vowel. The case endings follow plural or definite suffixes if these appear. For some of the cases, there is a range of forms possible, some covering more than one case, and the differences in meaning among these alternatives may be quite subtle.
- Nominative
- The nominative is used for nouns that are the subjects of clauses.
- Ibsaa man's name, Ibsaan 'Ibsaa (nom.)', makiinaa, qaba 'he has', Ibsaan makiinaa qaba 'Ibsaa has a car'
- Most nouns ending in short vowels with a preceding single consonant drop the final vowel and add -ni to form the nominative. Following certain consonants, assimilation changes either the n or that consonant (the details depend on the dialect).
- nama 'man', namni 'man (nom.)'
- namoota 'men'; namootni, namoonni 'men (nom.)' (t + n may assimilate to nn)
- If a final short vowel is preceded by two consonants or a geminated consonant, -i is suffixed.
- ibsa 'statement', ibsi 'statement (nom.)'
- namicha 'the man', namichi 'the man (nom.)' (the ch in the definite suffix -icha is actually geminated, though not normally written as such)
- If the noun ends in a long vowel, -n is suffixed to this. This pattern applies to infinitives, which end in -uu.
- maqaa 'name', maqaan 'name (nom.)'
- nyachuu 'to eat, eating', nyachuun 'to eat, eating (nom.)'
- If the noun ends in n, the nominative is identical to the base form.
- afaan 'mouth, language (base form or nom.)'
- Some feminine nouns ending in a short vowel add -ti. Again assimilation occurs in some cases.
- haadha 'mother', haati (dh + t assimilates to t)
- lafa 'earth', lafti
- Genitive
- The genitive is used for possession or "belonging"; it corresponds roughly to English of or -'s. The genitive is usually formed by lengthening a final short vowel, by adding -ii to a final consonant, and by leaving a final long vowel unchanged. The possessor noun follows the possessed noun in a genitive phrase. Many such phrases with specific technical meanings have been added to the Oromo lexicon in recent years.
- obboleetti 'sister', namicha 'the man', obboleetti namichaa 'the man's sister'
- hojii 'job', Caaltuu, woman's name, hojii Caaltuu, 'Caaltuu's job'
- barumsa 'field of study', afaan 'mouth, language', barumsa afaanii 'linguistics'
- In place of the genitive it is also possible to use the relative marker kan (m.) / tan (f.) preceding the possessor.
- obboleetti kan namicha 'the man's sister'
- Dative
- The dative is used for nouns that represent the recipient (to) or the benefactor (for) of an event. The dative form of a verb infinitive (which acts like a noun in Oromo) indicates purpose. The dative takes one of the following forms:
- Lengthening of a final short vowel (ambiguously also signifying the genitive)
- namicha 'the man', namichaa 'to the man, of the man'
- "-f" following a long vowel or a lengthened short vowel; -iif following a consonant
- intala 'girl, daughter', intalaaf 'to a girl, daughter'
- saree 'dog', sareef 'to a dog'
- baruu 'to learn', baruuf 'in order to learn'
- bishaan 'water', bishaaniif 'for water'
- "-dhaa" or "-dhaaf" following a long vowel
- saree 'dog'; sareedhaa, sareedhaaf 'to a dog'
- "-tti" (with no change to a preceding vowel), especially with verbs of speaking
- Caaltuu woman's name, himi 'tell, say (imperative)', Caaltuutti himi 'tell Caaltuu'
- Instrumental
- The instrumental is used for nouns that represent the instrument ("with"), the means ("by"), the agent ("by"), the reason, or the time of an event. The formation of the instrumental parallels that of the dative to some extent:
- -n following a long vowel or a lengthened short vowel; -iin following a consonant
- harka 'hand', harkaan 'by hand, with a hand'
- halkan 'night', halkaniin 'at night'
- -tiin following a long vowel or a lengthened short vowel
- Afaan Oromoo 'Oromo (language)', Afaan Oromootiin 'in Oromo'
- -dhaan following a long vowel
- yeroo 'time', yeroodhaan 'on time'
- bawuu 'to come out, coming out', bawuudhaan 'by coming out'
- Locative
- The locative is used for nouns that represent general locations of events or states, roughly at. For more specific locations, Oromo uses prepositions or postpositions. Postpositions may also take the locative suffix. The locative also seems to overlap somewhat with the instrumental, sometimes having a temporal function. The locative is formed with the suffix -tti.
- Arsiitti 'in Arsii'
- harka 'hand', harkatti 'in hand'
- guyyaa 'day', guyyaatti 'per day'
- jala, jalatti 'under'
- Ablative
- The ablative is to represent the source of an event; it corresponds closely to English from. The ablative, applied to postpositions and locative adverbs as well a nouns proper, is formed in the following ways:
- When the word ends in a short vowel, this vowel is lengthened (as for the genitive).
- biyya 'country', biyyaa 'from country'
- keessa 'inside, in', keessaa 'from inside'
- When the word ends ends in a long vowel, -dhaa is added (as for one alternative for the dative).
- Finfinneedhaa 'from Finfinnee (Addis Ababa)'
- gabaa 'market', gabaadhaa 'from market'
- When the word ends in a consonant, -ii is added (as for the genitive).
- Hararii 'from Harar'
- Following a noun in the genitive, -tii is added.
- mana 'house', buna 'coffee', mana bunaa 'cafe', mana bunaatii 'from cafe'
- An alternative to the ablative is the postposition irraa 'from' whose initial vowel may be dropped in the process:
- gabaa 'market', gabaa irraa, gabaarraa 'from market'
Notes
- Template:Note Stroomer, Harry (1987) A comparative study of three Southern Oromo dialects in Kenya. Hamburg: Helmut Buske Verlag, pp. xi-6.
- Template:Note Stroomer, p. 70.
- Template:Note Stroomer, p. 4.
External links
- Ethnologue report for Oromo.
- Voice of America news broadcast in Afaan Oromoo.
- Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) website contains many articles written in Oromo, and an online radio broadcast.
Bibliography
- Foot, Edwin C. (1913, Reprint: 1968) A Galla-English, English-Galla dictionary. Farnborough, Gregg. ISBN 0-576116-22-X
- Tamene Bitima (2000) A dictionary of Oromo technical terms. Oromo - English. Köln: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag. ISBN 3-89645-062-X [8]
- Tilahun Gamta (1989) Oromo-English dictionary. Addis Ababa: University Printing Press.
- Gragg, Gene B. et al. (ed., 1982) Oromo Dictionary. Monograph (Michigan State University. Committee on Northeast African Studies) no. 12. East Lansing, Mich. : African Studies Center, Michigan State Univ.
- Griefenow-Mewis, C. and Tamene Bitima (1994) Lehrbuch des Oromo. Köln: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag. ISBN 3-927620-05-X [9]
- Mohammed Ali, Zaborski, A. (1990) Handbook of the Oromo Language. Wroclaw, Poland: Polska Akademia Nauk. ISBN 8-304033-16-X [10]
- Praetorius, Franz (1872, Reprint: 1973) Zur Grammatik der Gallasprache. Hildesheim ; New York : G. Olms. ISBN 3-487065-56-8
- Stroomer, Harry (1987) A comparative study of three Southern Oromo dialects in Kenya. Hamburg: Helmut Buske Verlag. ISBN 3-87118-846-8 [11]
- Taha M. Roba (2004) Modern Afaan Oromo grammar : qaanqee galma Afaan Oromo. Bloomington, IN : Authorhouse. ISBN 1-418474-80-0br:Yezhoù oromoek
eu:Oromo hizkuntza fr:Oromo nl:Afaan Oromo nn:Oromo om:Afaan Oromoo fi:Oromon kieli zh:奧羅莫語