Somali language

The Somali language is a member of the East Cushitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic family. It is spoken mostly in Somalia and adjacent parts of Djibouti (majority), Ethiopia, Kenya, and Italy. Its speakers are known as Somalis. Because of the civil war and diaspora, speakers are found all over the world. The exact number of speakers is unknown but is estimated to be between 15 and 25 million.

Classification

Somali is an Afro-Asiatic language, of the East Cushitic branch. It is most closely related to Oromo and Afar. Somali has borrowed a certain number of words from Arabic since the arrival of Islam, mainly in the religious domain. It has also borrowed words from English and Italian from colonial times.

Academic studies of Somali began to be published around 1900. Important later scholars are Abraham, Andrzejewski, and Saeed. Compared with other Cushitic languages, Somali is relatively well-documented.

Geographic distribution

Somali is spoken mostly in Somalia and Somaliland (which broke off from Somalia in 1991, but is not yet recognized as a country), eastern Ethiopia, Djibouti and Kenya, but speakers are found all over the world because of the Somali civil war. Somali communities around the world, include, but are not limited to, the Middle East, Europe, North America and Australia. There are between 15 and 25 million Somali speakers.

Official status

Somali is an official language in Somalia. While not official, Somali is also important in Djibouti, Ethiopia, and Kenya.

Dialects

Saeed (1999) divides the dialects into three main groups: Northern, Benaadir and Maay. Northern Somali (or Northern-Central Somali) is also known as Common or Standard Somali. Benaadir is also known as Coastal Somalia - it is spoken on the Benadir Coast (from Cadale to south of Barawa, including Mogadishu), and in the immediate hinterland. The coastal dialects have additional phonemes which do not exist in Common Somali.

The Digil and Mirifle clans (sometimes called Rahanweyn) live in the southern areas of Somalia. Recent research (Diriye Abdullahi, 2000) has shown that, although previously classified with Somali, their languages and dialects are incomprehensible to Somali speakers. The most important language of the Digil and Mirifle is Maay. Other languages in this category are Jiido, Dabare, Garre, and Central Tunni. Of all these, Jiido is the most incomprehensible to Somali speakers. One important aspect in which the languages of the Digil and Mirifle differ from Somali is the lack of pharyngeal sounds. The retroflex is also replaced by in some positions.

Of the Somali dialect groups, the most widely used is Common Somali. Common Somali is spoken in most of Somalia, and in adjacent territories (Ethiopia, Kenya, and Djibouti), and is used by broadcasting stations in Somalia and in Somali-language broadcasts originating outside the country.

Phonology

Somali has 22 consonant phonemes including at least one at every place of articulation on the IPA chart. It has 20 pure vowel phonemes and 20 diphthongs. They occur in front and back, and long and short pairs.

It uses a system of tones which is usually classified as a pitch accent system. It also has front-back vowel harmony in word roots.

Grammar

Somali is an agglutinative language. The basic grammatical categories are:

Noun
Clitic pronoun
Verb
Adjective
Verbal adposition
Determiner
Focus word
Sentence type marker
Conjunction
Adverb

Somali has several strategies to indicate where the intention or the interest or the focus is located in the phrase: a topic-comment or focus construction. The words baa, ayaa, and waxaa put the focus on nouns and noun phrases.

Example:

John baa baxay - John Focus (baa) went out
John ayaa baxay - John Focus (ayaa) went out
Waxaa baxay John - Focus (waxaa) went out John

Thus, the words baa, ayaa, and waxaa unconsciously raise the question of who went out? Therefore the noun.

Somali also has the word waa which puts the focus on verbs and verb phrases.

Example:

John waa baxay - John Focus (waa) went out

Waa is different from other previous one we have just seen, because it raises the question of what did John do? Therefore the verb.

Writing system

See also: The language and literacy issue for more information about the selection of the script.

Three different writing systems have been devised for Somali: an Arabic-based one, a Latin-based one and a native one, Osmanya.

Before the colonial period, educated Somalis and religious fraternities used the Arabic script (for example, Sayyid Mohammed Abdullah Hassan's letter to a scholar, betraying him to the colonial powers, was in Arabic). The Qur'an was taught throughout Somalia, so children were exposed to the Arabic alphabet from a young age. Material discovered in 1940, mainly ancient letters and tomb inscriptions, demonstrates that the Somali language was written with the Arabic alphabet, like the Urdu and Persian languages. But this was not certainly "codified", and questions remain about the extent of its use. Further investigation is required.

The Osmanya alphabet was created in the 1920s by Cismaan Yuusuf Keenadiid. Following long debate, in 1972 the Latin-based script was finally adopted as the official one as part of a larger literacy program.

The Somali Latin alphabet, which follows an Arabic-based order, is:
', B, T, J, X, KH, D, R, S, SH, DH, C, G, F, Q, K, L, M, N, W, H, Y, A, E, I, O, U.

The following letters represent sounds which do not correspond with the same letter as the IPA symbol (eg B represents ):

' -
J -
X -
KH -
SH -
DH -
C -
Q -
W - or the second element in a diphthong
Y - or the second element in a diphthong
A - or
E - or
I - or
O - or
U - or

The alphabet does not use the following letters of the Latin alphabet: P, V and Z. There are 3 consonant digraphs: DH, KH and SH. Tone is not marked and a word-initial glottal stop is also not shown.

For consonants there is a one-to-one correspondence between graphemes and phonemes. Long vowels are written by doubling the vowel but the distinction between front and back vowels is not represented. Diphthongs are represented using Y or W as the second element (AY, AW, EY, OY and OW) and long diphthongs are shown with the first vowel doubled.

There is no standardized orthography so variations occur. Particularly -ay and -ey are freely interchangeable at the end of a word.

Capital letters are used for names and at the beginning of a sentence.

References

Diriye Abdullahi, Mohamed. 2000. Le Somali, dialectes et histoire, PH.D. dissertation, Université de Montréal
Saeed, John Ibrahim. Somali Reference Grammar. Springfield, VA: Dunwoody Press, 1993. (ISBN 0931745977)
Saeed, John Ibrahim. Somali. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, B.V., 1999.

External links

East Cushitic languages | Languages of Somalia | Languages of Ethiopia

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