Me'en language

Me'en
Spoken in	Ethiopia
Region	Eastern Africa
Native speakers	5,770 of Bodi dialect 145,333 of Me'en dialect  (date missing)
Language family	Nilo-Saharan? Eastern Sudanic Kir–Abbaian Surmic South Southeast Me'en
Writing system	Latin
Language codes
ISO 639-3	mym

Me'en (also Mekan, Mie'en, Mieken, Meqan, Men) is a Nilo-Saharan language (Eastern Sudanic, Surmic) spoken in Ethiopia by the Me'en people. In recent years, it has been written with the Ge'ez alphabet, but in 2007 a decision was made to use the Latin alphabet. Dialects include Bodi (Podi) and Tishena (Teshina, Teshenna).

Me'en is unique among Surmic languages in that it has ejective consonants.

Reliable descriptions of some parts of the language have been produced by Hans-Georg Will, but Conti Rossini's work is much less reliable, consisting of his efforts to edit the extensive language notes of a non-linguist.

References

• Conti Rossini, Carlo. (1913). "I Mekan o Suro nell'Etiopia meridionale e il loro linguaggio." Rend. R. Acc. Lincei XXII (7-10): 397-463.

• Diehl, Achim and Hans-Georg Will. (2007). "Meˀen language." In Siegbert Uhlig (ed.), Encyclopaedia Aethiopica 3, 907-909. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag.

• Will, Hans-Georg. 1989. "Sketch of Me'en grammar." In M. Lionel Bender (ed.), Topics in Nilo-Saharan linguistics , 129-50. Nilo-Saharan, 3. Hamburg: Helmut Buske.

• Will, Hans-Georg. 1998. "The Me'en verb system: Does Me'en have tenses?." In Gerrit J. Dimmendaal and Marco Last (eds.), Surmic languages and cultures , 437-58. Nilo-Saharan, 13. Cologne: R. Köppe

External links

• Ethnologue information on Me'en
• World Atlas of Language Structures information on Me'en