Talk:Oromo language

message: Can we find out why they would want to use latin to write a language, an African language with a non-African script. Now there letters are like 13 charecters due to the limits of latin, more history on the politics behind this would be good as i am very confused to the perks of this shift.--HalaTruth(ሀላካሕ) 04:07, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, the the fact is that the majority of African languages are written with Latin script.  Each script has its own limitations when it comes to representing a language.  The Latin script was obviously not designed for English or German or Polish, let alone Swahili, Oromo, or Hausa, so it had to be adapted in each case, and this was not particularly difficult in any of these cases.  Latin doesn't have any particular advantage or limitation when it comes to representing Oromo (any more than it does for English, which phonologically is probably as different from Latin as Oromo is); I believe it was adopted in part because of its use for many other languages, certainly not because Latin is "European" rather than "African". In fact, the European origin of Latin script can hardly be seen as very relevant anymore, given that this script is now used for languages as diverse as Vietnamese, Tagalog, Quechua, and Zulu.  As with English, Swahili, and other languages, the adaptations for Oromo included character combinations to represent particular phonemes (for example, "ch", "th", "ng" for English; "ch", "th", "ng" for Swahili; "dh", "ny", "ph" for Oromo).  I guess the question being asked is why the Ge'ez script wasn't chosen, and in this case, politics of course enters in.  It isn't any more difficult to adapt the Ge'ez script to Oromo than it is to adapt the Latin script (well, some arguments have been made that it is more difficult, but these seem to me to be politically oriented arguments). Of course Ge'ez script has been used for Oromo, going to back Onesimus. But not today.  — MikeG (talk) 05:45, 23 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  There is one point for which the Latin alphabet seems to suit better for writing Oromo than the Ge’ez writing system, that is the representation of vowels. You can represent seven different vowels with the Ge’ez system but Oromo has ten vowels, five short and five long vowels. And especially different length of final vowels can change the meaning of verb forms. Since the Ge’ez system is a syllabic system (every sign representing a consonant and a following vowel) it would be a little bit difficult to represent the missing three vowels. The Latin writing system differentiates between consonants and vowels. I think that is the most important advantage. But I would have also been possible to write Oromo with Latin or Ge’ez without representing vowel length. Haussa is written with Latin, but vowel length and tone are usually not marked. You could do the same with Oromo using one of the two writing systems at the risk of ambiguity in cases where vowel length changes the grammatical meaning. But, remembering the political situation in the early nineties, I also think that the main reason for choosing Latin was a political one. By the way there is also a remarkable body of Oromo literature in Arabic script, mainly from the Harar region and Wollo. Driss 09:49, 23 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: More importantly - What is the alphabet used for the Standard Written Oromo is the *critical* what is needed.
Many languages on this planet use a latin alphabet - All have different numbers of letters used and/or diacritics and accents used. The few google images I searched make no mention of 10 vowels in Latin Script - However, there is a Unicode Paper addressing Sapalo that needs to be included or addressed as I see no separate wiki article for this. I did not dig any further to see if this at proposal stage or included as yet into the Unicode Standard. - From counting the charts there are roughly 27 constructs for consonants and 13 vowels for each - So for this latin script we have an alphabet of at least 351 latin based glyphs for this "latin script".
http://www.unicode.org/L2/L1999/ShaykhBakriSapalo.html 80.5.219.60 (talk) 10:27, 27 May 2016 (UTC)
thread_title: Can we add more

message: In the part about dialects and especially about the Wollo dialect there is mentioning of “the city of Wollo”. But there is no city with that name. Wollo is, as most people know, the name of the respective region. I think it is a mistake and the author meant another city/town. In fact, the area where Oromo is spoken stretches approximately from the area of Shewa Robit in the south to somewhere in the north of Bati. Driss 07:52, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I think I wrote that, and I meant the city of Dessie, not Wollo.  Feel free to edit this part if you know more about the boundaries of the dialect. — MikeG (talk) 14:41, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

text: I think the whole question of dialects is being avoided in this article.  Variation in the way that many Oromo people speak is not addressed by politicians, but certainly scholars should be able to dispassionately address this huge issue.  Somebody please write something, but not just a parroting of the politicians. Pete unseth (talk) 12:34, 4 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Dialects

message: The article currently states Oromo "is spoken as a first language by more than 35 million."  However, no source is quoted for this claim.  The Ethnologue lists a total of 17,273,000 mother tongue speakers in Ethiopia and Kenya. Also, the article states "Within Ethiopia, Oromo is the first most spoken (more than 40%)."  The Ethnologue states that there are 17,372,913 speakers of Amharic.http://www.ethnologue.com/show_country.asp?name=ET That is larger than the number cited speakers of Oromo. There are many people who speak Oromo and Amharic as a second language, but the claim that it is the most widely spoken language in Ethiopia needs some documentation or it must be changed in the Wikipedia article. Wikipedia is a place where documented information is the rule.
: Wikipedia List_of_languages_by_number_of_native_speakers says that Amharic has 25,000,000 versus 24,000,000 for Amharic. Ethnologue and most other souces say that Oromo is a group of several languages, none having as many as 10,000,000 . It seems decisive; I will remove the claim that Oromo is Ethiopia's most-spoken language. 24.108.58.1 (talk) 23:44, 21 June 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: There are frequent changes to the statistic for the number of speakers. But no editor cites a reliable source. Certainly there must be a source that we can agree on! Peace to all people of the Horn of Africa!Pete unseth (talk) 17:03, 24 November 2016 (UTC)
thread_title: Statistics about number of speakers

message: I am not language expert but from what I know, Oromo has both definite and indefinite articles. The indefinite article in Oromo is tokko. Tokko is a number actually which means one, but it is also used as indefinite article. For example, mucaa tokkon arge means I saw some/a boy. However, articles in general are not commonly used in Afan Oromo .  I speak Western Oromo myself and I am telling you from my experience. Please, consider revising the idea that Afan Oromo does not have indefinite article. Tumsaa (talk) 16:18, 12 July 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Definitiness 

message: A lot of this edit last November was reverted, but it left a lot of rambling details in the lede section and confused the sense of the previous version. I’ll remove it - if it’s relevant it should probably be added to the Speakers section. I’ll dump the current version here for now.
Oromo (pron. Laurie Bauer, 2007, The Linguistics Student’s Handbook, Edinburgh or  Dictionary Reference: OromoThe Free Dictionary: Oromo) is an Afroasiatic language. It is the most widely spoken tongue in the family's Cushitic branch. Forms of Oromo are spoken as a first language by more than 20 million Oromo people in Oromia and neighboring peoples in Ethiopia like:- In Harari region (56%) are Oromo people, Benishangul Gumuz, walloo(around 5 million Oromo people), west Gojjam(Metakkel woreda, Meca woreda 1 & 2, Ilma Nadessa woreda), Dire Dhawa administration(48% of Oromo people), Addis Ababa(Finfinnee) Adiminstration with more than 1.5 million Oromo people, Raayyaa and Azeeboo(more than 1.6 million Oromo people) in Tigrai region and parts of other countries in Africa Kenya, Somalia, Tanzania, South Africa, Egypt, Libya, Eritrea and other parts of the world like: US, specifically Minnesota (Little Oromia), Europe, Australia and Saudi Arabia. Oromo is a dialect continuum; not all varieties are mutually intelligible.  Older publications often refer to the language as Galla, a term that is considered pejorative and no longer used.
☸ Moilleadóir ☎ 03:25, 16 February 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Too much random detail in lede! 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: The article leaves the reader in the dark about the question of whether there is a standardized variety of Oromo or not. We learn in section 1 that Oromo has a number of varieties, but in the sections that follow one gets the impression as if there must be a kind of prestige or standard variety, since info about broadcasting, public information services, education etc. only speaks of the Oromo language (the only exception is Kenya-related information, which specifies about the variety (Borana)). Also the huge unsourced grammar section does not specify which variety is discussed, as if a certain variant might be taken for granted here.
Having skimmed through several papers that are available online, I get the impression that standardization is still an ongoing process. So we need to know more about the current public use of Oromo: are children taught in the local variety of their region? What variety is chosen in official federal websites?  I would be great if you could add some information about this in the article, or at least help us out with some quality sources which can be preliminarily placed in the "Further reading"-section for future expansion. –Austronesier (talk) 09:16, 14 July 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: No, there is currently no clearly defined standard for all Oromo, although it is developing by default as being West-Central Oromo. You can read up on that in this article. Can't think why I am particularly recommending this one... LandLing 09:28, 14 July 2021 (UTC)
replies: text:  Wow. I have expected much by asking the right one, but this is more than expected. :) Spot on, thanks! So there is at least a dominant ("de-facto standard") variety, with all the potential sociolinguistic ups and downs. I'll try to weave this into the article in the next days. –Austronesier (talk) 10:18, 14 July 2021 (UTC)

text: I was grown in Hararghe which speaks Eastern Oromo variety. However I used to learn book written in West-central Oromo. This is due to Western Oromo have exposure to learning and they are more literate and are in office in many region of Oromia(as they created writing system). I think the difference is not the grammar but vocabulary(there are unfamiliar words which is not known in Easter Oromo but for them). Media also use West Central Oromo but nowadays all variety are used. As all variety can be understood if you know one. 196.189.89.248 (talk) 12:58, 22 November 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Standardization? 

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thread_title:  Commons files used on this page or its Wikidata item have been nominated for deletion 

message: Hi Andreas, you wrote that 'Oromo, historically also called Galla.' Here, 'Galla' means which is an insult and a misrepresentation of the population. It appears that you may have copied and pasted without investigating what the haters wrote a century ago. I strongly recommend removing the reference that mentions 'Galla' unless you want to perpetuate an insult to the Oromo people even today. Zealber (talk) 17:29, 6 January 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: See discussion above. LandLing 23:00, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

text: Zealber, you will also find more discussion on this on the talk page of another user. I hope you'll find it to be helpful. LandLing 23:07, 6 January 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Stop insulting the Oromo people