Wolaitta language
Wolaitta | |
---|---|
Wolayttatto Doonaa | |
Native to | L2: 90,000[1] |
| |
Language codes | |
ISO 639-2 | wal |
ISO 639-3 | wal |
Glottolog | wola1242 |
Wolaitta or Wolayttatto Doonaa is a
There are conflicting claims about how widely Wolaytta is spoken. Some hold that Melo, Oyda, and Gamo-Gofa-Dawro are also dialects, but most sources, including Ethnologue and ISO 639-3 now list these as separate languages. The different communities of speakers also recognize them as separate languages.[2] A variety called Laha is said to be 'close' to Wolaytta in Hayward (1990) but listed as a distinct language by Blench; however, it is not included in Ethnologue.
Wolaytta has existed in written form since the 1940s, when the
In speaking their language, the Wolaytta people use many proverbs. A large collection of them, in Ethiopian script, was published in 1987 (Ethiopian calendar)[A] by the Academy of Ethiopian Languages.[5] Fikre Alemayehu's 2012 MA thesis from Addis Ababa University provides an analysis of Wolaytta proverbs and their functions.[6]
Lexical similarity with
- Gamo 79% to 93%[7]
- Gofa 84%[7]
- Dawro 80%[7]
- Kullo 80%[citation needed]
- Dorze 80%[7]
- Koorete 48%[7]
- Male 43%[7]
Language status
The language is the official language in the Wolayita Zone of Ethiopia. Portions of the Bible were produced in 1934, the New Testament in 1981, and the entire Bible in 2002.
Phonology
Consonants
Wakasa (2008) gives the following consonant phonemes for Wolaytta. (He also has mˀ, nˀ, lˀ, but these are consonant clusters, ⟨m7, n7, l7⟩.) Items in ⟨angle brackets⟩ show the Latin alphabet, where this differs from the IPA:
Bilabial | Dental | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | ||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Nasal
|
m | n | ||||
Plosive
|
voiceless | p | t | k | ʔ ⟨7 / '⟩ | |
voiced | b | d | ɡ | |||
ejective | pʼ ⟨ph⟩ | tʼ ⟨x⟩, ɗ (?) ⟨dh⟩ | kʼ ⟨q⟩ | |||
Affricate
|
voiceless | tʃ ⟨ch⟩ | ||||
voiced | dʒ ⟨j⟩ | |||||
ejective | tʃʼ ⟨c⟩ | |||||
Fricative
|
voiceless | s | ʃ ⟨sh⟩ | h, h̃ ⟨nh⟩ | ||
voiced | z | ʒ ⟨zh⟩ | ||||
Approximant
|
l | j ⟨y⟩ | w | |||
Rhotic | r |
Three consonants require further discussion. Wakasa (2008:96f) reports that the use of ⟨7⟩ for the glottal stop has been replaced by the use of the apostrophe. The sound written ⟨nh⟩ is described by Wakasa (2008:44) as a '
Vowels
Wolaytta has five vowels, which appear both long and short:
Front | Central | Back | |
---|---|---|---|
High
|
i, iː | u, uː | |
Mid | e, eː | o, oː | |
Low
|
a, aː |
Grammar
Word order
Like other Omotic languages, the Wolaytta language has the basic word order SOV (subject–object–verb), as shown in the following example (Wakasa 2008:1041):
na7-ái
child-NOM.M.SG.
7iss-í
one-OBL.
maxááp-aa
book-ABS.M.SG.
shamm-íis.
buy-PF.3M.SG.
"The boy bought a book."
It has postpositional phrases, which precede the verb (Wakasa 2008:1042):
ta-7ish-ái
my-brother-NOM.M.SG.
maxááp-aa
book-ABS.M.SG.
ba-lágg-iya-ppe
his:own-friend-OBL.M.SG.-from
tall7-íis.
borrow-PF.3M.SG.
"My brother borrowed a book from his friend."
Nouns used adjectivally precede the nouns that they modify (Wakasa 2008:1044)
ló77-o
good-OBL
dé7-uwa
life-ABS.M.SG
de7-áis.
live-IMPF.1SG.
"I live a good life."
Numerals precede the nouns that they quantify over (Wakasa 2008:1045)
na7-ái
child-NOM.M.SG
naa77-ú
two-OBL
mácc-a
female-OBL
7as-atá
people-ABS.PL
be7-íis.
see-PF.3M.SG.
"The boy saw two women."
See also
Further reading
- Adams, Bruce A. 1983. A Tagmemic Analysis of the Wolaitta Language. Unpublished PhD. thesis, University of London.
- Adams, Bruce A. 1990. Name nouns in Wolaitta. In Omotic Language Studies ed. by Richard Hayward, 406-412. London: School of Oriental and African Studies.
- Amha, Azeb. 2001. Ideophones and compound verbs in Wolaitta. In Ideophones. Typological Studies in Language, ed. by Voeltz, F.K. Erhard and Christa Kilian-Hatz, 49-62. Amsterdam - Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
- Amha, Azeb. 2010. Compound verbs and ideophones in Wolaitta revisited. In Complex Predicates: Cross-Linguistic Perspectives on Event Structure, ed. by Mengistu Amberber, Brett Baker and Mark Harvey, 259-290. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Amha, Azeb. 2001. Wolaitta. In Facts about the World Languages, an Encyclopedia of the Worlds Major Languages, Past and Present, ed. by J. Garry and C. Rubino, ed., 809-15. New York - Dublin: H.W. Wilson.
- Amha, Azeb, 1996. Tone-accent and prosodic domains in Wolaitta. In Studies in African Linguistics 25(2), pp. 111–138.
- Lamberti, Marcello and Roberto Sottile. 1997. "The Wolaytta Language". In Studia Linguarum Africae Orientalis 6: pp. 79–86. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe.
- Ohman, Walter and Hailu Fulass. 1976. Welamo. In Language in Ethiopia, ed. by M. L. Bender, C. Bowen, R. Cooper, and C. Ferguson, pp. 155–164. Oxford University Press.
- Wakasa, Motomichi. 2008. A Descriptive Study of the Modern Wolaytta Language.[8] Ph.D. thesis. University of Tokyo.
References
- ^ a b c d e Wolaitta at Ethnologue (27th ed., 2024)
- ^ Abebe 2002
- ^ Sarah Vaughan, "Ethnicity and Power in Ethiopia" Archived 2011-08-13 at the Wayback Machine (University of Edinburgh: Ph.D. Thesis, 2003), pp. 250-258
- ^ "Ethiopian – Calendar Converter". www.calendar-converter.com. Retrieved 26 August 2017.
- ^ "Good Amharic Books | Welcome!". Archived from the original on 2013-03-15. Retrieved 2013-02-03.
- ^ "An analysis of Wolayta proverbs: Function in focus" (PDF). Retrieved 2019-09-18.
- ^ a b c d e f Cite error: The named reference
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was invoked but never defined (see the help page). - ^ Wakasa, Motomichi (2008). A Descriptive Study of the Modern Wolaytta Language Authors (PDF) (Doctoral thesis). The University of Tokyo. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2012-04-26. Retrieved 2011-12-04.