Afar language

Afar is a Lowland East Cushitic language spoken in Ethiopia, Eritrea and Djibouti. It is believed to have 1.5 million speakers, the Afari. 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.

Phonology

Consonants

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

		Bilabial	Labiodental	Alveolar	Lateral	Palatal	Retroflex	Velar	Pharyngeal	Glottal
Stop	voiced	b  [b]		d  [d]			dh  [ɖ]	g  [g]
	voiceless			t  [t]				k  [k]
Fricative	voiced								c  [ʕ]
	voiceless		f  [f]	s  [s]					x  [ħ]	h  [h]
Nasal		m  [m]		n  [n]
Approximant		w  [w]			l  [l]	y  [j]
Tap				r  [r]

Vowels

• 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 are aspirated, e.g., abe = aˡbeʰ.

Stress

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

See also

• Afar people
• Afar Region

Bibliography

• Bliese, Loren F. (1976) 'Afar', in Bender, Lionel M. (ed.) The Non-Semitic Languages of Ethiopia. Michigan: African Studies Center, Michigan State University, 133–164.
• Bliese, Loren F. (1981) A generative grammar of Afar (Summer Institute of Linguistics publications in linguistics vol. 65). Dallas: Summer Institute of Linguistics / Arlington, Texas: University of Texas at Arlington.
• Colby, J.G. (1970) 'Notes on the northern dialect of the 'Afar language', Journal of Ethiopian Studies, 8, 1, 1–8.
• Morin, Didier (1997) Poésie traditionnelle des Afars (Langues et cultures africaines, 21 / SELAF vol. 363). Paris/Louvain: Peeters.
• Voigt, Rainer M. (1975) 'Bibliographie des Saho-Afar', Africana Marburgensia, vol. 8, 53–63.

External links

• Ethnologue on Afar
• Afar Sample at Language Museum
• The beginning of Genesis 1 in Afar at The Rosetta Project.