Ale | |
---|---|
Native to | Ethiopia |
Region | Dirashe special woreda, Southern Nations, Nationalities, and People's Region |
Native speakers | 69,000 (2007 census) [1] |
Dialects |
|
Ethiopic script | |
Language codes | |
ISO 639-3 | gwd |
Glottolog | gaww1239 |
Ale (also known as Gawwada, Gauwada, Gawata, Kawwad'a, Kawwada) is an Afro-Asiatic language spoken in southern Ethiopia in the administratively part of the "southern Peoples, nations, and Nationalities Regional State" (SPNNR). It is part of the Dullay dialect cluster. [2] [3]
There is no superordinate ethnonym. The name 'Dullay' was established by AMBORN, MINKER and SASSE (1980) and named after the river of the same name, which is known as Weyt'o in Amharic. This is therefore an exonimous name, but is also officially used in Ethiopia. [4]
Dullay-speaking tribes inhabit an area that stretches from the Gaedulla-Dobase Mountains south of Lake Cam to the highlands of Hanna-Hamar. Historically, the Dullay-speaking people lack an overarching term for themselves, and they do not seem to identify as an ethnic or linguistic group. Occasionally, three terms have been employed in scholarly literature. The first one, introduced by Bender (1971) came from the official Amharic administrativ denominations. for the area at that time. Second is "Qawko" by Hayward (1978) from the term "man" (saw—h-o). And the last, "Dullay" was introduced by Amborn, Linker and Sasse (1980) from the river known in Amharic as Weyt'o, which is one of the most salient features in these area. [3] In addition to that it must be written, that none of those names bears any meaning to the speakers. So all of those denomination are exonimous names. The denomination of "Ale" is a rather young denomination used in English publications and used by the today's administration of Ethiopia.
Within the Dullay dialect cluster the western and the eastern group of dialects can be opposed, the western area with Ts'amakko and the eastern part with Gawwada, which spans the two banks of Weyt'o river. Eastern dialects occupy the highlands to the east and north of Gawwada.
The name Gawwada originally comes from the village of the same name and the surrounding area that gave the language its name. [3] Gawwada and other Dullay variations, apart from Ts'amakko, are spoken in the mountainous regions at an altitude of around 1600–1700 metres. [4]
There are several distinct dialect centres within the Dullay language area. For example, the 'Harso-Dobase'. However, this differs only very slightly and is often treated as a single unit. There is also the Gawwada-Gollango. There are greater differences here than with the Harso-Dobase dialects. Other ALE-Gawwada variations are, for example, Dihina, Gergere, Gobeze or Gorose.
Here is an example of a distinction between two variations:
Harso-Dobase | Gollango-Gawwada | Translation |
---|---|---|
paste | Pukka’te | Head |
korse | saakanko | Meat |
koto | mano | House |
Po’- | Ran- | to fall |
There is generally little information about the Dullay-speaking tribes before the end of the 19th century. The most significant historical event in the modern consciousness of the Dullay-speaking Triebes is the conquest of their territory by Menilek the 2nd's troops in 1897/98. Through fighting, deportation and slavery, the population was decimated to such an extent that today only 1/3 of the former population still lives in this area. [3]
According to the 1994 census, there were 32,636 Gawwada speakers, and a total of about 90,000 people speaking Dullay variations in general. [3] The language is not threatened with extinction. [4]
Bilingualism and multilingualism are widespread in the Dullay language area. People often speak Amharic first, which is now the official language in Ethiopia and is spoken and used in official offices etc. Especially after the Second World War a minimum modern administration was established, and it is from these times that intense Gawwada-Amharic constant can be dated. The language contact increase in intensity after the fall of the empire. That is the reason why there is a huge amount of Amharic loans, which is probably in rise, together with literacy and the already mentioned bilingualism, because Amharic is the only language through which people have access to „modern" vocabulary within subjects such as politics, Christianity or technology. It is the language in which education is taught and in which all official organizational processes take place. Loan words from European languages (mostly English or Italian) also find their way into Gawwada through Amharic. This is also the language that is spoken the most in addition to Gawwada. Today the present constitution accords full rights to every community and language of the country: "All Ethiopian languages shall enjoy equal state recognition." Another language often spoken by the people is Konso and other Konsoid variations. In most cases, Dullay variations are not written. [3]
The social structure revolves around clans that practice exogamy. These clans possess distinct abilities related to natural occurrences, plants, and animals. Various clans exhibit diverse powers, such as the ability to control rainfall and enhance cattle multiplication. Some clans specialize in tobacco, while others possess unique powers associated with matters of love or peace. Although clans do not exert economic influence in terms of land or activities, they play a crucial role in regulating marriages and serve as the primary social entity responsible for community reproduction and preservation. Each clan is led by both a political and a religious chief (polo-h-o). [3]
The phonological system consists of 22 consonants and 10 vowels. The consonants include 12 plosives, five fricatives, one affricate, one trill and three approximants. There are also seven alevolar consonants.
Although the words usually end with a vowel, all consonants can occur at the beginning, in the middle and at the end of a word.
Here is a selection of the different vowel phonologies:
1. oral, plosives:
/p/, a bilabial pulmonic stop, realised as:
/t/, an alveolar pulmonic stop realised as:
/k/, a velar pulmonic stop, realised as:
/q/, unvular pulmonic stop, realised as:
/ʔ/, a voiceless laryngeal/glottal pulmonic stop, realised as lengthening of a preceding vowel when postvocalic, often with accompanying glottalization ([vʔ:]);
2. glottalic, implosives :
/ɗ/ a voiced postalveolar implosive stop, realised as:
/ɠ/ a voiced velar implosive stop, realised as a glottal- velar coarticulation [ʔɠ]when geminate;
3. glottalic, ejectives:
/t'/, an alveolar ejective stop;
/k'/ a voiceless velar ejective stop;
4. affricate
5. etc.
Long vowls will be written with the doubling of the corresponding grapheme except in phonetic transcriptions (/aa/, /ee/, /ii/, /oo/, /uu/) and both [a,a:] and [ɐ, ɐ:] will be written. /a,aa/. The phonological value of length is shown by a sisable number of minimal pairs:
a | aa | ||
---|---|---|---|
Gap-a | ‚to seize, catch‘ | Gaap-a | ‚to be afraid‘ |
Harr-e | ‚door‘ | Haarr-e | ‚donkey‘ |
i | ii | ||
---|---|---|---|
Sikk-e | Trap for big animals | siikk-e | sugarcane |
Tir-e | ‚liver' | Tiir-e | thread |
o | oo | ||
---|---|---|---|
Qot-a | ‚to dig‘ | Qoot-a | ‚To distribute’ |
qott-o | ‚type of hoe' | qoot-t-o | ‚share, part‘ |
u | uu | ||
---|---|---|---|
qut’ | ‚to cut with an instrument‘ | quut' | to take a kattle back to the kral in the evening’ |
The following table defines all possible syllable structures:
σ = CV(V)(C)
CV | /pa.ko/ | ‚mother; language' |
CVV | /yaa.ye/ | ‚mother‘ |
CVC | /Kol.le/ | ‚river’ |
CVVC | /kuur.ro/ | ‚speckled pigeon‘ |
The oneset of a syllable is therefore always consonantal in Gawwada, while a coda can be represented by (rarely) a singel consonant or (more usually) be null.
The Dullay variations are characterised by a very rigid construction of subject-object-verb (SOV).
Example: | ||
---|---|---|
Puta | ʔuruur-e | ʔi=ʔerak-i |
hyena_man | wind-F | INDV=send-PFV.3M |
'The hyena man sent onwards the wind' |
More often the MP Coreferential with the subject clitic is missing.
There are differences in linguistic coding between polar questions and constituent questions, although both types use the same TAM coding. When using yes/no questions, the voice goes up, as in English, for example.
Example | |
---|---|
mul-o | šaah-i ︎ |
all-M | dry-PFV.3M-Q |
"Did it all dry up?" |
With a consonant-final word the lengthening of the final bowl is replaced by =i
Example |
---|
ʔizzah=i ︎ |
three=Q |
"Three?" |
Constituent questions involve a particular element, which is substituted by an interrogative word. The interrogative word may be led by a postposition.
Questionwords | ||
---|---|---|
yaha | 'who' | generic interrogative pronoun for a person |
moʔ-o | 'what' | general interrogative pronoun for an object |
ʔah-a | 'where' | (genre interrogative pronoun for a place) |
par-a | 'when' | |
mala | 'how' | |
meʔ | 'how much/many' |
Example | |
---|---|
moʔ-o | koɗ-ti︎ |
what-M | do-PFV.2SG |
What did you do? |
From a morphological perspective, nouns can be inflected according to gender, number or case. If you inflect a word in the Gawwada language, you add a suffix to the word or the word stem changes as a whole. There are different types of nouns: common nouns, proper nouns (names), adjectival nouns, positional nouns and the proniminal head and personal pronouns.
The following suffixes/infixes signal that a noun is in the singular form:
The following suffixes/infixes signal that a noun is in the plural form:
With some exceptions, all nouns are in the singular form, based on the following:
-o: Masculine
-a: Also masculine, but only for a specific type of nouns, often loanwords or kinship terms.
-e: Feminine
-e: Sometimes also the plural marker.
Final vowl | Gender | Gawwada | English |
---|---|---|---|
-o | M | paš-o | ‚field‘ |
-e | F | ʔamayl-e | ‚handle of a cup‘ |
-e | PL | Minn-e | ‚house‘ |
-a | M | ʔapiy-a | ‚mothers brother‘ |
From a morphological perspective, nouns can be inflected according to gender, number or case. If you inflect a word in the Gawwada language, you add a suffix to the word or the word stem changes as a whole. There are different types of nouns: common nouns, proper nouns (names), adjectival nouns, positional nouns and the proniminal head and personal pronouns.
The following suffixes/infixes signal that a noun is in the singular form:
The following suffixes/infixes signal that a noun is in the plural form:
SING-M | polis-itt-o | 'apoliceman | |||
Polis-e | PL | ,police' | SING-F | polis-its-e | ,policewoman' |
PLURAL-PL | polis-aɗɗ-e | ‚Many police‘ |
In the case of countable animates where gender holds little cultural significance, linguistic expression does not convey natural gender. Many of these nouns lack a morphological plural form and, instead, utilize a fixed singulative:
In Gawwada, verbs are inflected for person, number, gender, aspect and mood:
There are 3 persons in the singular and plural. In the inflection, the endings for the person, gender and number are then combined. Accordingly, the subject of the sentences can be singular or plural in number, feminine or natural in gender.
Verbs in Gawwada can be described according to four different states. The first are "situations", in which the verbs assume a static, non-dynamic form. They can also be differentiated according to "events", "processes" and "actions".
Verbs can be differentiated between Unbounded und Bounded
The negation is done by the negativ Selektor „ye“.
Auch in Gawwada können Verben nach Tense, Aspect, Mood und Modality unterschieden werden. Außerdem gibt es in Gawwada die Unterscheidung der Verben in zwei Klassen. Klasse 1 und Klasse 2. Klasse 1 Verben sind Verben, die auf einen singel-consonant enden.
For adjectives, there is no clear-cut definition. However, they can be described as modifiers of a noun or as pronominal headings for attributives or predicates. Adjectives exhibit non-inherent gender, yet they are connected to nouns with genders. Adjectives cannot function alone within a sentence or as the head of the sentence. They also lack tense, aspect, or mood morphology but refer to the noun.
In the numerical system, numbers function similarly to numerals and modifiers, with "one" being the exception. When it comes to the tens, the base numeral is "ten," which is then expanded by an intermediary element (=pa) and the digit that completes the number.
Number EN | Number Gawwada | Number EN | Number Gawwada | Number EN | Number Gawwada |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Toʔon | 11 | hudda=pa toʔon | 30 | hudan-k-o-ʔizzah |
2 | Lakki | 12 | hudda=pa lakki | 40 | Hudan-k-o-salah |
3 | ʔizzah | 13 | hudda=pa ʔizzah | 50 | Hudan-k-o-hupin |
4 | Salah | 14 | hudda=pa salah | 60 | Hudan-k-o-tappi |
5 | Hupin | 15 | hudda=pa hupin | 70 | Hudan-k-o-tahhan |
6 | Tappi | 16 | hudda=pa tappi | 80 | Hudan-k-o-setten |
7 | Tahhan | 17 | hudda=pa tahhan | 90 | Hudan-k-o-kollan |
8 | Setten | 18 | hudda=pa setten | 100 | Dippa |
9 | Kollan | 19 | hudda=pa kollan | 200 | Dippa lakki |
10 | Huddan | 20 | Hudan-k-o-lakki |
Tigrinya is an Ethiopian Semitic language commonly spoken in Eritrea and in northern Ethiopia's Tigray Region by the Tigrinya and Tigrayan peoples. It is also spoken by the global diaspora of these regions.
Oromo, historically also called Galla, is an Afroasiatic language that belongs to the Cushitic branch. It is native to the Ethiopian state of Oromia and Northern Kenya and is spoken predominantly by the Oromo people and neighboring ethnic groups in the Horn of Africa. It is used as a lingua franca particularly in the Oromia Region and northeastern Kenya.
In phonetics, ejective consonants are usually voiceless consonants that are pronounced with a glottalic egressive airstream. In the phonology of a particular language, ejectives may contrast with aspirated, voiced and tenuis consonants. Some languages have glottalized sonorants with creaky voice that pattern with ejectives phonologically, and other languages have ejectives that pattern with implosives, which has led to phonologists positing a phonological class of glottalic consonants, which includes ejectives.
Implosive consonants are a group of stop consonants with a mixed glottalic ingressive and pulmonic egressive airstream mechanism. That is, the airstream is controlled by moving the glottis downward in addition to expelling air from the lungs. Therefore, unlike the purely glottalic ejective consonants, implosives can be modified by phonation. Contrastive implosives are found in approximately 13% of the world's languages.
Neo-Mandaic, also known as Modern Mandaic, sometimes called the "ratna", is the modern reflex of the Mandaic language, the liturgical language of the Mandaean religious community of Iraq and Iran. Although severely endangered, it survives today as the first language of a small number of Mandaeans in Iran and in the Mandaean diaspora. All Neo-Mandaic speakers are multilingual in the languages of their neighbors, Arabic and Persian, and the influence of these languages upon the grammar of Neo-Mandaic is considerable, particularly in the lexicon and the morphology of the noun. Nevertheless, Neo-Mandaic is more conservative even in these regards than most other Neo-Aramaic languages.
Northern or North Sámi is the most widely spoken of all Sámi languages. The area where Northern Sámi is spoken covers the northern parts of Norway, Sweden and Finland. The number of Northern Sámi speakers is estimated to be somewhere between 15,000 and 25,000. About 2,000 of these live in Finland and between 5,000 and 6,000 in Sweden, with the remaining portions being in Norway.
Jutlandic, or Jutish, is the western variety of Danish, spoken on the peninsula of Jutland in Denmark.
Middle Welsh is the label attached to the Welsh language of the 12th to 15th centuries, of which much more remains than for any earlier period. This form of Welsh developed directly from Old Welsh.
The Sikkimese language, also called Sikkimese, Bhutia, or Drenjongké, Dranjoke, Denjongka, Denzongpeke and Denzongke, belongs to the Tibeto-Burman languages. It is spoken by the Bhutia in Sikkim, India and in parts of Koshi, Nepal. It is the Official Language of Sikkim, India. The Sikkimese people refer to their own language as Drendzongké and their homeland as Drendzong. Up until 1975 Sikkimese was not a written language. After gaining Indian Statehood the language was introduced as a school subject in Sikkim and the written language was developed.
Tzʼutujil is a Mayan language spoken by the Tzʼutujil people in the region to the south of Lake Atitlán in Guatemala. Tzʼutujil is closely related to its larger neighbors, Kaqchikel and Kʼicheʼ. The 2002 census found 60,000 people speak Tzʼutujil as their mother tongue. The two Tzʼutujil dialects are Eastern and Western.
Ixcatec is a language spoken by the people of the Mexican village of Santa María Ixcatlan, in the northern part of the state of Oaxaca. The Ixcatec language belongs to the Popolocan branch of the Oto-manguean language family. It is believed to have been the second language to branch off from the others within the Popolocan subgroup, though there is a small debate over the relation it has to them.
Hamer or Hamer-Banna is a language within the South Omotic branch of the Afroasiatic language family. It is spoken primarily in southern Ethiopia by the Hamar people, Banna people, and by speakers of Karo.
Southern Oromo, or Borana, is a variety of Oromo spoken in southern Ethiopia and northern Kenya by the Borana people. Günther Schlee also notes that it is the native language of a number of related peoples, such as the Sakuye.
The Owa language is one of the languages of Solomon Islands. It is part of the same dialect continuum as Kahua, and shares the various alternate names of that dialect.
Arbore is an Afro-Asiatic language spoken by the Arbore people in southern Ethiopia in a few settlements of Hamer woreda near Lake Chew Bahir.
Baiso or Bayso is an Afro-Asiatic, more specifically a Lowland East Cushitic language belonging to the Omo-Tana subgroup, and is spoken in Ethiopia, in the region around Lake Abaya.
The Proto-Italic language is the ancestor of the Italic languages, most notably Latin and its descendants, the Romance languages. It is not directly attested in writing, but has been reconstructed to some degree through the comparative method. Proto-Italic descended from the earlier Proto-Indo-European language.
Historical linguistics has made tentative postulations about and multiple varyingly different reconstructions of Proto-Germanic grammar, as inherited from Proto-Indo-European grammar. All reconstructed forms are marked with an asterisk (*).
The indigenous languages of the Americas form various linguistic areas or Sprachbunds that share various common (areal) traits.
Jad (Dzad), also known as Bhotia and Tchhongsa, is a language spoken by a community of about 300 in the states of Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh, in India. It is spoken in several villages, and the three major villages are Jadhang, Nelang and Pulam Sumda in the Harsil sub-division of the Uttarkashi District. Jad is closely related to the Lahuli–Spiti language, which is another Tibetic language. Jad is spoken alongside Garhwali and Hindi. Code switching between Jad and Garhwali is very common. The language borrows some vocabulary from both Hindi and Garhwali. It is primarily a spoken language.