Somali language

Somali(/səˈmɑːli,soʊ-/sə-MAH-lee, soh-;Latin script:Af Soomaali;Wadaad:اف صومالِ‎;Osmanya: 𐒖𐒍 𐒈𐒝𐒑𐒛𐒐𐒘[afsoːmaːli])is anAfroasiaticlanguage belonging to theCushiticbranch. It is spoken primarily inGreater Somalia, and by theSomali diasporaas a mother tongue. Somali is an official language in bothSomaliaandEthiopia,and serves as a national language inDjibouti, it is also a recognised minority language inKenya. The Somali language is officially written with theLatin alphabetalthough theArabic scriptand several Somali scripts likeOsmanya,Kaddareand theBorama scriptare informally used.
Somali is classified within the Cushitic branch of the Afroasiatic family, specifically,Lowland East Cushiticin addition toAfarandSaho.Somali is the best-documented of the Cushitic languages,with academic studies of the language dating back to the late 19th century.
The Somali language is spoken in Somali inhabited areas ofSomalia,Djibouti,Ethiopia,Kenya,Yemenand by members of theSomali diaspora. It is also spoken as an adoptive language by a few ethnic minority groups and individuals in Somali majority regions.
Somali is the most widely spoken Cushitic language in the region followed byOromoandAfar.
As of 2021, there are approximately 24 million speakers of Somali, spread inGreater Somaliaof which around 17 million reside in Somalia.The language is spoken by an estimated 95% of the country's inhabitants,and also by a majority of the population in Djibouti.
Following the start of theSomali Civil Warin the early 1990s, the Somali-speaking diaspora increased in size, with newer Somali speech communities forming in parts of the Middle East, North America and Europe.
Constitutionally, Somali andArabicare the twoofficial languagesofSomalia.Somali has been an official national language since January 1973, when theSupreme Revolutionary Council(SRC) declared it theSomali Democratic Republic's primary language of administration and education. Somali was thereafter established as the main language of academic instruction informs 1 through 4, following preparatory work by the government-appointed Somali Language Committee. It later expanded to include all 12 forms in 1979. In 1972, the SRC adopted aLatin orthographyas the official national alphabet over several other writing scripts that were then in use. Concurrently, theItalian-language daily newspaperStella d'Ottobre("The October Star") was nationalized, renamed toXiddigta Oktoobar, and began publishing in Somali.The state-runRadio Mogadishuhas also broadcast in Somali since 1951.Additionally, other state-run public networks likeSomaliland National TV, regional public networks such asPuntland TV and Radioand, as well asEastern Television NetworkandHorn Cable Television, among other private broadcasters, air programs in Somali.
Somali is recognized as an official working language in theSomali Regionof Ethiopia.Although it is not an official language ofDjibouti, it constitutes a major national language there. Somali is used in television and radio broadcasts,with the government-operatedRadio Djiboutitransmitting programs in the language from 1943 onwards.
The Kenya Broadcasting Corporation also broadcasts in the Somali language in its Iftin FM Programmes. The language is spoken in the Somali territories within North EasternKenya, namelyWajir County,Garissa CountyandMandera County.
The Somali language is regulated by theRegional Somali Language Academy, an intergovernmental institution established in June 2013 inDjibouti Cityby the governments of Djibouti, Somalia and Ethiopia. It is officially mandated with preserving the Somali language.
As of October 2022, Somali andOromoare the only Cushitic languages available onGoogle Translate.
TheSomali languagesare broadly divided into three main groups:Northern Somali,BenadirandMaay.Northern Somaliforms the basis for Standard Somali.It is spoken by the majority of the Somali populationwith its speech area stretching fromDjibouti, and theSomali RegionofEthiopiato theNorthern Frontier District.This widespread modern distribution is a result of a long series of southward population movements over the past ten centuries from theGulf of Adenlittoral.Lamberti subdivides Northern Somali into three dialects: Northern Somali proper (spoken in the northwest; he describes this dialect as Northern Somali in the proper sense), the Darod group (spoken in the northeast and along the eastern Ethiopia frontier; greatest number of speakers overall), and the Lower Juba group (spoken by northern Somali settlers in the southern riverine areas).
Benadir(also known as Coastal Somali) is spoken on the centralIndian Oceanseaboard, includingMogadishu. It forms a relatively smaller group. The dialect is fairlymutually intelligiblewith Northern Somali.
The language has five basicvowels.
Somali has 22 consonantphonemes.
The retroflex plosive/ɖ/may have an implosive quality for some Somali Bantu speakers, and intervocalically it can be realized as the flap[ɽ]. Some speakers produce/ħ/withepiglottal trillingas /ʜ/ in retrospect./q/is oftenepiglottalized.
The letter⟨dh⟩is pronounced as a retroflex flap[ɽ]when it occurs intervocalically, as inqudhaanjo.
The letter⟨kh⟩, found in Arabic loanwords, is rarely pronounced as a velar fricative. It is more often conflated with/q/, which is pronounced[χ]in syllabic coda position.
Pitch is phonemic in Somali, but it is debated whether Somali is apitch accent, or it is atonal language.Andrzejewski (1954) posits that Somali is a tonal language,whereas Banti (1988) suggests that it is apitchsystem.
The syllable structure of Somali is (C)V(C).
Root morphemes usually have a mono- or di-syllabic structure.
Clusters of two consonants do not occur word-initially or word-finally, i.e., they only occur at syllable boundaries. The following consonants can be geminate: /b/, /d/, /ɖ/, /ɡ/, /ɢ/, /m/, /n/, /r/ and /l/. The following cannot be geminate: /t/, /k/ and the fricatives.
Two vowels cannot occur together at syllable boundaries. Epenthetic consonants, e.g. [j] and [ʔ], are therefore inserted.
Somali is anagglutinativelanguage, and also shows properties ofinflection. Affixes mark many grammatical meanings, including aspect, tense and case.
Somali has an old prefixal verbal inflection restricted to four common verbs, with all other verbs undergoing inflection by more obvious suffixation. This general pattern is similar to the stem alternation that typifiesCairene Arabic.
Somali has two sets of pronouns: independent (substantive, emphatic) pronouns and clitic (verbal) pronouns.The independent pronouns behave grammatically as nouns, and normally occur with the suffixed article -ka/-ta (e.g.adiga, "you").This article may be omitted after a conjunction or focus word. For example,adnameaning "and you..." (fromadi-na).Clitic pronouns are attached to the verb and do not take nominal morphology.Somali marksclusivityin the first person plural pronouns; this is also found in a number of other East Cushitic languages, such asRendilleand Dhaasanac.
As in various other Afro-Asiatic languages, Somali is characterized bypolarity of gender, whereby plural nouns usually take the opposite genderagreementof their singular forms.For example, the plural of the masculine noundibi("bull") is formed by converting it into femininedibi.Somali is unusual among the world's languages in that the object is unmarked for case while the subject is marked, though this feature is found in other Cushitic languages such as Oromo.
Somali is asubject–object–verb(SOV) language.It is largelyhead final, withpostpositionsand with obliques preceding verbs.These are common features of the Cushitic and Semitic Afroasiatic languages spoken in the Horn region (e.g.Amharic).However, Somali noun phrases are head-initial, whereby the noun precedes its modifying adjective.This pattern of general head-finality with head-initial noun phrases is also found in other Cushitic languages (e.g. Oromo), but not generally in Ethiopian Semitic languages.
Somali uses threefocusmarkers:baa,ayaaandwaxa(a), which generally mark new information or contrastive emphasis.Baaandayaarequire the focused element to occur preverbally, whilewaxa(a)may be used following the verb.
Somaliloanwordscan be divided into those derived from other Afroasiatic languages (mainly Arabic), and those ofIndo-Europeanextraction (mainly Italian).
Somali's main lexical borrowings come from Arabic, and are estimated to constitute about 20% of the language's vocabulary.This is a legacy of the Somali people's extensive social, cultural, commercial and religious links and contacts with nearby populations in the Arabian peninsula. Arabic loanwords are most commonly used in religious, administrative and education-related speech (e.g.aamiinfor "faith in God"), though they are also present in other areas (e.g.kubbad-da, "ball").Soravia (1994) noted a total of 1,436 Arabic loanwords in Agostini a.o. 1985,a prominent 40,000-entry Somali dictionary.Most of the terms consisted of commonly used nouns. These lexical borrowings may have been more extensive in the past since a few words that Zaborski (1967:122) observed in the older literature were absent in Agostini's later work.In addition, the majority of personal names are derived from Arabic.
The Somali language also contains a few Indo-European loanwords that were retained from the colonial period.Most of these lexical borrowings come from English andItalianand are used to describe modern concepts (e.g.telefishen-ka, "the television";raadia-ha, "the radio").There are 300 loan words from Italian, such asgarawatifor "tie" (fromItaliancravatta),dimuqraadifromdemocratico(democratic),mikroskoobfrommicroscopio, and so on.
Additionally, Somali contains lexical terms fromPersian,UrduandHindithat were acquired through historical trade with communities in theNear EastandSouth Asia(e.g.khiyaar"cucumber" fromPersian:خيارkhiyār).Other loan words have also displaced their native synonyms in some dialects (e.g.jabaati"a type of flat bread" from Hindi:  चपातीchapātidisplacingsabaayad).Some of these words were also borrowed indirectly via Arabic.
As part of a broader governmental effort oflinguistic purismin the Somali language, the past few decades have seen a push in Somalia toward replacement of loanwords in general with their Somali equivalents orneologisms. To this end, the Supreme Revolutionary Council during its tenure officially prohibited the borrowing and use of English and Italian terms.
Archaeologicalexcavationsand research in Somalia uncoveredancient inscriptionsin a distinctwriting system.In an 1878 report to theRoyal Geographical Societyof Great Britain, scientistJohann Maria Hildebrandtnoted upon visiting the area that "we know from ancient authors that these districts, at present so desert, were formerly populous and civilised[...] I also discovered ancient ruins and rock-inscriptions both in pictures and characters[...] These have hitherto not been deciphered."According to the 1974 report for Ministry of Information and National Guidance, this script represents the earliest written attestation of Somali.
Much more recently, Somali archaeologistSada Mirehas published ancient inscriptions found throughoutSomaliland. As for much of Somali linguistic history the language was not widely used for literature, Dr. Mire's publications however prove that writing as a technology was not foreign nor scarce in the region.These pieces of writing are from the SemiticHimyariteandSabaeanlanguages that were largely spoken in what is modern day Yemen —"there is an extensive and ancient relationship between the people and cultures of both sides of the Red Sea coast" Mire posits. Yet, while many more such ancient inscriptions are yet to be found or analyzed, many have been "bulldozed by developers, as the Ministry of Tourism could not buy the land or stop the destruction".
Besides Ahmed's Latin script, other orthographies that have been used for centuries for writing the Somali language include the long-establishedArabic scriptandWadaad's writing.According toBogumił Andrzejewski, this usage was limited to Somali clerics and their associates, as sheikhs preferred to write in the liturgical Arabic language. Various such historical manuscripts in Somali nonetheless exist, which mainly consist of Islamic poems (qasidas), recitations and chants.Among these texts are the Somali poems by Sheikh Uways and Sheikh Ismaaciil Faarah. The rest of the existing historical literature in Somali principally consists of translations of documents from Arabic.
Since then a number of writing systems have been used for transcribing the Somali language. Of these, theSomali Latin alphabet, officially adopted in 1972, is the most widely used and recognised as official orthography of the state.The script was developed by a number of leading scholars of Somali, includingMusa Haji Ismail Galal,B. W. AndrzejewskiandShire Jama Ahmedspecifically for transcribing the Somali language, and uses all letters of the English Latin alphabet exceptp,vandz.There are nodiacriticsor other special characters except the use of the apostrophe for theglottal stop, which does not occur word-initially. There are three consonantdigraphs: DH, KH and SH. Tone is not marked, and front and back vowels are not distinguished.
Writing systems developed in the twentieth century include theOsmanya,BoramaandKaddare alphabets, which were invented byOsman Yusuf Kenadid,Abdurahman Sheikh NuurandHussein Sheikh Ahmed Kaddare, respectively.
Several digital collections of texts in the Somali language have been developed in recent decades. These corpora includeKaydka Af Soomaaliga(KAF), Bangiga Af Soomaaliga, the Somali Web Corpus (soWaC),a Somali read-speech corpus, Asaas (Beginning in Somali) and a Web-Based Somali Language Model and text Corpus called Wargeys (Newspaper in Somali).
For all numbers between 11kow iyo tobanand 99sagaashal iyo sagaal, it is equally correct to switch the placement of the numbers, although larger numbers is some dialects prefer to place the 10s numeral first. For example 25 may both be written aslabaatan iyo shanandshan iyo labaatan(lit. Twenty and Five & Five and Twenty).
Although neither the Latin nor Osmanya scripts accommodate this numerical switching.
*the commas in the Osmanya number chart are added for clarity