Afar language

Afar
Qafár af
Native to	Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti
Region	Afar Triangle, North-Eastern Africa
Native speakers	1.4–1.5 million  (date missing)
Language family	Afro-Asiatic Cushitic East Cushitic Lowland East Cushitic Saho–Afar Afar
Writing system	Ethiopic (in Ethiopia), Latin
Recognised minority language in	Eritrea
Language codes
ISO 639-1	aa
ISO 639-2	aar
ISO 639-3	aar

Afar (Qafár af) is a Lowland East Cushitic language spoken in Ethiopia, Eritrea and Djibouti. It is believed to have 1.5 million speakers, the Afar. The basic word order in Afar, like in other East Cushitic languages, is subject–object–verb. Its speakers have a literacy rate of between one and three per cent. Its closest relative is the Saho language.

In Eritrea, Afar is recognized as one of nine national languages which formally enjoy equal status (though Tigrinya and Arabic are by far of greatest significance in official usage). There are daily broadcasts in the national radio and a translated version of the Eritrean constitution. In education, however, Afar speakers prefer Arabic – which many of them speak as a second language – as the language of instruction. In the Afar Region of Ethiopia, Afar is partially used in some of the few schools, while Amharic is the region's working language.

Phonology

Consonants

The consonants of the Afar language in the standard orthography are listed below (with IPA notation in brackets):

		Labial	Alveolar	Retroflex	Palatal	Velar	Pharyngeal	Glottal
Stops	voiceless		t  [t]			k  [k]
	voiced	b  [b]	d  [d]	x  [ɖ]		g  [ɡ]
Fricatives	voiceless	f  [f]	s  [s]				c  [ħ]	h  [h]
	voiced						q  [ʕ]
Nasals		m  [m]	n  [n]
Approximants		w  [w]	l  [l]		y  [j]
Tap			r  [r]

Consonants which close syllables are released, e.g., akʰˈme.

Vowels and stress

• short
  • a [ʌ]
  • e [e]
  • i [i]
  • o [o]
  • u [u]
• long
  • aa [aː]
  • ee [eː]
  • ii [iː]
  • oo [oː]
  • uu [uː]

Sentence final vowels of affirmative verbs are aspirated (and stressed), e.g. abeh = /aˈbeʰ/ 'He did.' Sentence final vowels of negative verbs are not aspirated (nor stressed), e.g. maabinna = /ˈmaabinna/ 'He did not do.' Sentence final vowels of interrogative verbs are lengthened (and stressed), e.g. abee? = /aˈbeː/ 'Did he do?' Otherwise, stress in word-final.

Phonotactics

Syllables are of the form (C)V(V)(C). One exception is the three-consonant cluster -str-.

Writing system

Afar may be written either with the Latin script or Ge'ez.

Linguists of the Institut des Langues de Djibouti, the Eritrean Ministry of Education and the Ethiopian Afar Language Studies & Enrichment Center are working to develop a standardized written version of Afar in order to facilitate alphabetization of its speakers.

Latin alphabet

A, B, T, S, E, C, K, X, I, D, Q, R, F, G, O, L, M, N, U, W, H, Y a, ba, ta, sa, e, ca, ka, xa, i, da, qa, ra, fa, ga, o, la, ma, na, u, wa, ha, ya

See also

• Afar people
• Afar Region

Bibliography

• Loren F. Bliese. 1976. "Afar", The Non-Semitic Languages of Ethiopia. Ed. Lionel M. Bender. Ann Arbor, Michigan: African Studies Center, Michigan State University. Pages 133–164.
• Loren F. Bliese. 1981. A generative grammar of Afar. Summer Institute of Linguistics publications in linguistics vol. 65. Dallas: Summer Institute of Linguistics & The University of Texas at Arlington. ISBN 0-88312-083-6.
• J.G. Colby. 1970. "Notes on the northern dialect of the Afar language", Journal of Ethiopian Studies 8:1–8.
• R.J. Hayward and Enid M. Parker. 1985. Afar-English-French dictionary with Grammatical Notes in English. London: School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.
• Richard J. Hayward. 1998. "Qafar (West Cushitic)", Handbook of Morphology. Ed. A. Spencer & A. Zwicky. Oxford: Blackwell. Pages 624-647.
• Didier Morin. 1997. Poésie traditionnelle des Afars. Langues et cultures africaines, 21 / SELAF vol. 363. Paris/Louvain: Peeters.
• Enid M. Parker. 2006. English–Afar Dictionary. Washington DC: Dunwoody Press.
• Rainer M. Voigt. 1975. "Bibliographie des Saho–Afar", Africana Marburgensia 8:53–63.

External links

• Afar language at Ethnologue (16th ed., 2009)
• World Atlas of Language Structures information on Qafar
• Afaraf - Méthode de langue afare (Much information about Afar, in French)
• PanAfriL10n page on Afar