Harari is an Ethiopian Semitic language spoken by the Harari people of Ethiopia. Old Harari is a literary language of the city of Harar, a central hub of Islam in Horn of Africa.[5] According to the 2007 Ethiopian census, it is spoken by 25,810 people. Harari is closely related to the Eastern Gurage languages, Zay, and Silt'e, all of whom are believed to be linked to the now extinct Semitic Harla language.[6][7] Locals or natives of Harar refer to their language as Gēy Sinan or Gēy Ritma'language of the City' (Gēy is the word for how Harari speakers refer to the city of Harar, whose name is an exonym).[8] According to Wolf Leslau, Sidama is the substratum language of Harari and influenced the vocabulary greatly.[9] He identified unique Cushitic loanwords found only in Harari and deduced that it may have Cushitic roots.[10]
Harari was originally written with a version of the Arabic script, then the Ethiopic script was adopted to write the language. Some Harari speakers in diaspora write their language with the Latin alphabet.
Wolf Leslau discusses Harari–East Gurage phonology and grammar:[11] The noun has two numbers, singular and plural. The affix -ač changes singulars into plurals:
abōč'a man'; abōčač'men'
wandaq'a servant'; wandaqač'servants'
gar'a house'; garač'houses'
Nouns ending in a or i become plural without reduplicating this letter:
gafa'a slave'; gafač'slaves'
gubna'a harlot'; gubnač'harlots'
liği'a son'; liğiyač'sons'
qabri'a grave'; qabriyač'graves'
/s/ alternates with /z/:
färäz'a horse'; färäzač'horses'
iraaz'toga'; iraazač'togas'
Gender
Masculine nouns may be converted into feminines by three processes. The first changes the terminal vowel into -it, or adds -it to the terminal consonant:
rágá'an old man'; rágít'an old woman'
buchí'male dog'; buchít'female dog'
wasíf'a slave boy'; wasífít'a slave girl'
Animals of different sexes have different names. and this forms the second process:
bárá'an ox'; lám'a cow'
The third and the most common way of expressing sex is by means of korma'male or man' and inistí'woman, female', corresponding to English "he-" and "she-":
Harari is genrally written in three scripts. It was originally written in an unmodified and now in a standardized modified Arabic Script.[12][13][14] The Ethiopic script was then adopted to write Harari.[12] There is a Latin version of the script used by the Harari diaspora.[13][15]
Harari Arabic script
Harari Arabic script consists of 36 letters, made up of the original 28 Arabic letters, plus 8 additional letters for sounds unique to Harari or to loanwords of European origin. 8 of the original 28 letters are only used for writing of loanwords of Arabic origin (shown in beige in the table below). 2 of the 8 new letters are only used for writing of loanwords of European origin (shown in green in the table below).
Harari Arabic script is also made up of 5 vowel diacritics. A unique and noteworthy feature of this script is that it indicates stressed syllables in an explicit manner, as explained in the following section.
In Harari Arabic script, there are 5 vowels (a, e, i, o, u). These vowels are shown with the three Arabic diacritics (a, i, u), plus two additional diacritics (e, o). Furthermore, in Harari Arabic script, vowels are also distinguished by length, indicated by mater lectionis letters, and by stress, indicated by a combination of hamza and mater lectionis letters.
Harari can be written in the unmodified Ethiopic script as most vowel differences can be disambiguated from context. The Harari adaptation of the Ethiopic script adds a long vowel version of the Ethiopic/Amharic vowels by adding a dot on top of the letter. In addition certain consonants are pronounced differently when compared to the Amharic pronunciation.
The table below shows the Harari alphasyllabary with the Romanized, Arabic equivalence, and IPA representation along the rows and the Romanized vowel markings along the columns.[16]
The Harari Latin Alphabet has eight digraphs: ch, dh, gh, gn, kh, sh, xh, and zh. It is possible to have a geminated (double) consonant. In the case of digraphs, only the initial letter is doubled, i.e. “dh” followed by “dh” is written as “ddh” ፅፅ / ذّ)
The apostrophe character has multiple functions in Harari Latin orthography:
It indicates that the preceding consonant is an isolated consonant and not part of a digraph, e.g. hêgʼna (ሔ́ግነ / حٛىݘْنَ - replace), i.e. gʼn is “g+n” rather than “gn”.
It distinguishes between a geminated digraph and a consonant followed by digraph, magʼgna (መግኘ / مَݘْڹَ - throwing) i.e. gʼgn is “g+gn” rather than “ggn”.
It separates a consonant and a following independent vowel, Gaz’i (ገዝኢ / چَزْإِ - God)
If following a vowel, it indicates that the vowel is stressed, raʼyi (ረእዪ / رَأْيِ - idea) or usuʼ (ኡሱእ / أُسُؤْ - person).
Sample Text
Below is a sample text, in the three scripts for Harari.[16][17]
Back in 1992 Harari Language School was established to teach our children the Harari language. To simplify the process of teaching we adopted the Latin script and have successfully developed it for the need of the Harari language.
In 1999, when the Harari Regional Government adopted the Sabean (Ethiopic) script, we tried to use it here for our students. However our students found Sabean script very hard to learn.
↑ 2021 Census of Canada (9 February 2022). "Statistics Canada 2021". Government of Canada. Retrieved 24 February 2024.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
1 2 3 4 5 Andrew Cunningham (2011). Harari Harfi(PDF). State Library of Victoria and the Australian Saay Harari Association. Archived from the original(PDF) on 2013-04-10.
Andrew Cunningham (2011). Harari Harfi(PDF). State Library of Victoria and the Australian Saay Harari Association. Archived from the original(PDF) on 2013-04-10.
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