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Chara people

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The Chara also known as the Tsara are a people group of Ethiopia. They form a part of the Gimira peoples of Ethiopia and live in the Kaffa Highlands,[1] and the Debub Omo area.

Their three main villages are Geba a meša, Buna Anta, and Kumba, Ethiopia and they practise subsistence farming and hold to a syncretic religion of Orthodox Christianity with tribal practices.[2][3] The Chara people speak their own Chara language[4] a member of the Omotic Language group,[5][6] which is linguistically similar to Mela[7] and the numerically much larger Wolaytta[8][9] both of which many Chara also speak.[10] (See Ethiopian language map).

The number of Chara have been decimated due to slavery and war and are estimated to number between 16,500[11] and 6,984 (1994 census)[12] people.

References

  1. ^ Chara at hornof Africa.org.
  2. ^ Chara In Ethiopia.
  3. ^ Yilma, Aklilu 2002 Sociolinguistic survey report on the Chara language of Ethiopia.
  4. ^ CHara in Ethiopia at Joshua Project.
  5. ^ Ethiopian languages.
  6. ^ Switch-reference and Omotic-Cushitic language contact in Southwest Ethiopia, Journal of Language Contact 5 (2012) 80.
  7. ^ Sociolinguistic Survey Report of the Chara, Dime, Melo, and Nayi Languages of Ethiopia.
  8. ^ ethnologue Africa.
  9. ^ Yilma, Aklilu (1995), "Some notes on the Chara language: Sound system and noun morphology", S.L.L.E. linguistic reports 32: 2-12.
  10. ^ Chara language at Ethnologue (17th ed., 2013)
  11. ^ Chara at peoplegroups.org
  12. ^ Ethiopia at Country Guides and Profiles.