Languages of Somalia
| Languages of Somalia | |
|---|---|
 Map of Somali language distribution. | |
| Official | Somali, Arabic[1][2] |
| Immigrant | Amharic, Oromo, Swahili |
| Foreign | English, Italian |
| Keyboard layout | |
The languages of Somalia refers to the various spoken forms of communication in Somalia. It includes the nation's official languages, as well as its minority and foreign languages. The term also encompasses the writing systems traditionally used to transcribe those languages.
Languages
Somali
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The Somali language is the official language of Somalia and the mother tongue of the Somali people, the nation's most populous ethnic group.[1][2] It is a member of the Cushitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family, and its nearest relatives are the Afar and Saho languages.[3] Somali is the best documented of the Cushitic languages,[4] with academic studies of it dating from before 1900.
The exact number of speakers of Somali is unknown. One source estimates that there are 7.78 million speakers of Somali in Somalia itself and 12.65 million speakers globally.[5]
The Somali language is spoken by ethnic Somalis in Somalia, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Yemen and Kenya, and in the Somali diaspora. It is also spoken as an adoptive language by a few ethnic minority groups in these regions.
Somali dialects are divided into three main groups: Northern, Benaadir and Maay. Northern Somali (or Northern-Central Somali) forms the basis for Standard Somali. Benaadir (also known as Coastal Somali) is spoken on the Benadir coast from Cadaley to south of Merca, including Mogadishu, as well as in the immediate hinterland. The coastal dialects have additional phonemes which do not exist in Standard Somali. Maay is principally spoken by the Digil and Mirifle (Rahanweyn) clans in the southern areas of Somalia.[6]
Arabic
In addition to Somali, Arabic, which is also an Afro-Asiatic tongue, is an official national language in Somalia.[1] Many Somalis speak it due to centuries-old ties with the Arab World, the far-reaching influence of the Arabic media, and religious education; particularly the Yemeni dialect.[7]
Foreign & minority languages
English is also widely used and taught. Italian used to be a major language, but its influence significantly diminished following independence. It is now most frequently heard among older generations. Other minority languages include Bravanese (also known as Chimwiini or Chimbalazi), a variant of the Bantu Swahili language that is spoken along the coast by the Bravanese people, as well as Kibajuni, another Swahili dialect that is the mother tongue of the Bajuni minority ethnic group.
Writing system
Overview
An ancient script seems to have been used to write Somali.[8] Since then, a number of writing systems have been used for transcribing the language. Of these, the Somali Latin alphabet is the most widely-used, and has been the official writing script in Somalia since the government of former President of Somalia Mohamed Siad Barre formally introduced it in October 1972.[9] The script was developed by the Somali linguist Shire Jama Ahmed specifically for the Somali language, and uses all letters of the English Latin alphabet except p, v and z. This alphabet has 21 consonants and 5 vowels. There are no diacritics or other special characters except the use of the apostrophe for the glottal stop, which is not word-initial. There are three consonant digraphs: DH, KH and SH. Tone is not marked; front and back vowels are not distinguished. Capital letters are used at the beginning of a sentence and for proper names.
Starting from 1960, debate about which writing system to use for transcribing the Somali language dragged on for nine years. No fewer than a dozen linguists were tasked with developing a workable script. Eventually, Shire Jama Ahmed's refined Somali Latin script was adopted, an alphabet which he used to publish pamphlets and small Af Soomaali drillbooks in his own printing press. Ahmed argued that even though most people were in favor of using the Arabic script, it was more practical to use Latin primarily due to its simplicity, the fact that it lent itself well to writing Somali since it could cope with all of the sounds in the language, and the already widespread existence of machines and typewriters designed for its use.[10]
Besides Ahmed's Latin script, other orthographies that have been used for centuries for writing Somali include the long-established Arabic script and Wadaad's writing.[11] Indigenous writing systems developed in the twentieth century include the Osmanya, Borama and Kaddare scripts, which were invented by Osman Yusuf Kenadid, Sheikh Abdurahman Sheikh Nuur and Hussein Sheikh Ahmed Kaddare, respectively.[12]
Modern history
Before the arrival of the Italians and British, educated Somalis and religious fraternities either wrote in Arabic or used an ad hoc transliteration of Somali into Arabic script referred to as Wadaad's writing. Most of the renowned Somali rebel leader Sayyid Mohammed Abdullah Hassan's missives, including a letter he wrote to a scholar who betrayed him to the colonial powers, were in Arabic. Qur'anic schools (madrassas) were ubiquitous throughout Somalia, so children were exposed to the Arabic alphabet from a very young age. Material first discovered in 1940, mainly ancient letters and tomb inscriptions, demonstrates that the Somali language, like the Urdu and Persian languages, had long been written with the Arabic alphabet. However, this was likely not codified, and questions remain about the extent of its use.
A number of attempts had been made from the 1920s onwards to standardize the language using a number of different alphabets. Pamphlets explaining the new standardization were released to the public in a soccer stadium in Mogadishu on October 10, 1972.
The first comprehensive dictionaries were produced in 1976, the Qaamuus kooban ee af Soomaali ah and Qaamuuska Af-Soomaaliga. On the orders of the Barre regime, civil servants were required to pass language proficiency exams, and a vast literacy campaign was launched wherein students were sent to rural areas to teach others the new script. By 1978, the majority of Somalis were reportedly literate. This would go down historically as one the fastest developments of mass literacy anywhere in the world.
Notes
- ^ a b c According to article 7 of The Transitional Federal Charter of the Somali Republic: The official languages of the Somali Republic shall be Somali (Maay and Maxaatiri) and Arabic. The second languages of the Transitional Federal Government shall be English and Italian.
- ^ a b "Somalia". World Factbook. Central Intelligence Agency. 2009-05-14. Retrieved 2009-05-31.
- ^ I. M. Lewis, Peoples of the Horn of Africa: Somali, Afar and Saho, (Red Sea Press: 1998), p.11.
- ^ "A software tool for research in linguistics and lexicography: Application to Somali". Springerlink.com. doi:10.1007/BF01540131. Retrieved 2010-06-27.
- ^ Ethnologue: Somalia Ethnologue.com
- ^ Andrew Dalby, Dictionary of languages: the definitive reference to more than 400 languages, (Columbia University Press: 1998), p.571.
- ^ Dalby, Andrew (1999). Dictionary of Languages: The Definitive Reference to More Than 400 Languages. Bloomsbury Pub Ltd. p. 25. ISBN 0231115687.
- ^ Ministry of Information and National Guidance, Somalia, The writing of the Somali language, (Ministry of Information and National Guidance: 1974), p.5.
- ^ Economist Intelligence Unit (Great Britain), Middle East annual review, (1975), p.229
- ^ Andrew Simpson, Language and National Identity in Africa, (Oxford University Press: 2008), p.288
- ^ http://www.nlscorps.org/Languages/SM.aspx
- ^ David D. Laitin, Politics, Language, and Thought: The Somali Experience, (University Of Chicago Press: 1977), pp.86-87
References
- Diriye Abdullahi, Mohamed. 2000. Le Somali, dialectes et histoire. Ph.D. dissertation, Université de Montréal.
- Saeed, John Ibrahim. 1987. Somali Reference Grammar. Springfield, VA: Dunwoody Press.
- Saeed, John Ibrahim. 1999. Somali. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
External links
prepared bylajeclow