Wolaytta language
| Wolaytta | ||
|---|---|---|
| Walamo, Ometo | ||
| Spoken in | Ethiopia | |
| Region | Wolaytta Region | |
| Total speakers | 1,231,673, including 999,694 monolinguals (1998) | |
| Language family | Afro-Asiatic | |
| Language codes | ||
| ISO 639-1 | None | |
| ISO 639-2 | wal | |
| ISO 639-3 | wal | |
| Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. | ||
Wolaytta[1] is an Omotic language spoken in the Wolaita Zone and some parts of the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and People's Region of Ethiopia. The number of speakers of this language is estimated at 2,000,000 (1991 UBS); it is the native language of the Welayta people.[2] The estimates of the population vary greatly because it is not agreed where the boundaries of the language are.
There are conflicting claims about how widely Wolaytta is spoken. The Ethnologue identifies one smaller dialect region: Zala. Some hold that Melo, Oyda, and Gamo-Gofa-Dawro are also dialects, but most authorities, including Ethnologue and ISO 639-3 now list these as separate languages. The different communities of speakers also recognize them as separate languages.[3]
Wolaytta has existed in written form since the 1940s, when the Sudan Interior Mission first devised a system for writing it. The writing system was later revised by a team led by Dr. Bruce Adams. They finished the New Testament in 1981 and the entire Bible in 2002. It was one of the first languages the Derg selected for their literacy campaign (1979-1991), before any other southern languages. Welaytta pride in their written language led to a fiercely hostile response in 1998 when the Ethiopian government distributed textbooks written in Wegagoda -- an artificial language based on amalgamating Wolaytta with several closely-related languages. As a result the textbooks in Wegagoda were withdrawn and teachers returned to ones in Wolaytta.[4]
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[edit] Lexical similarity with
[edit] Geographical names
Balta, Borodda, Ganta, Otschollo, Uba.
[edit] Language status
The language is the official language in the Welayta zone of Ethiopia. The Ethnologue cites statistics that 5% to 25% of the population are literate in this language. Portions of the Bible were produced in 1934, the New Testament in 1981, and the entire Bible in 2002.
[edit] Linguistic description
Like other Omotic languages, the Wolaytta language has the basic word order SOV (Subject Object Verb). It also has ejective consonants, but is notable in Ethiopia for having /p/ instead of /f/.
[edit] Notes
- ^ Other transliterations include Wolaitta, Wolaita, and Wolayta or Welayta. Wolataita; Borodda; Uba; Ometo; Wolayitigna; and Wolaitatuwa
- ^ Ethnologue report for language code:wal
- ^ Abebe 2002
- ^ Sarah Vaughan, "Ethnicity and Power in Ethiopia" (University of Edinburgh: Ph.D. Thesis, 2003), pp. 2550- 258
[edit] Further reading
- Abebe, Alemayehu. 2002. "Sociolinguistic survey report on the Ometo dialect of Ethiopia, part II." SIL Electronic Survey Reports 2002-012.
- Adams, Bruce A. 1983. A Tagmemic Analysis of the Wolaitta Language. Unpublished PhD. thesis, University of London.
- Adams, Bruce. 1990. Name nouns in Wolaitta. In Omotic Language Studies ed. by 406-412. London: School of Oriental and African Studies.
- Ohman, Walter and Hailu Fulass. 1976. Welamo. In Language in Ethiopia, ed. by M. L. Bender, C. Bowen, R. Cooper, and C. Ferguson, pp. 155-164. Oxford University Press.
- Ethnologue entry for Wolaytta
