Everything about Somali Language totally explained
Somali (Somali:
Af Soomaali) is a member of the
East Cushitic branch of the
Afro-Asiatic language family spoken by
ethnic Somalis in
Somalia,
Djibouti,
Ethiopia,
Yemen and
Kenya, as well as by the Somali
Diaspora around the world -- an estimated total population of between 10 and 16 million speakers.
In 1972, Somali was declared the official language of Somalia and is used in education, administration and the media.
Classification
Somali is an
Afro-Asiatic language, of the
East Cushitic branch. It is most closely related to
Oromo and
Afar. Compared with other
Cushitic languages, Somali is relatively well-documented, with academic studies of the language dating from around 1900.
Geographic Distribution
The exact number of speakers of Somali is unknown. However, it's estimated to be anywhere between 10 to 16 million worldwide. One source estimates that there are 7.78 million speakers of Somali in Somalia itself and 12.65 million speakers globally. A population estimate made by the Dutch Universiteitsbibliotheek Utrecht puts the Somali population somewhere between 10 and 15 million. Combined with a large international expatriate community, it's difficult to get a specific number of Somali speakers, but somewhere between 10 and 16 million worldwide seems a reasonable estimate.
Official status
Somali was the national language of
Somalia from 1972, gaining official status with standardization (Standard Somali) and the adoption of the
Latin alphabet, developed under orders of then president
Siad Barre. After the collapse of the central Somali government in the
Somali civil war in the 1990s, Somali has remained an official language or
de facto national language of the various regional governments such as
Somaliland and
Puntland.
Dialects
Somali dialects are divided into three main groups: Northern, Benaadir and Maay. Northern Somali (or Northern-Central Somali) forms the basis for Standard Somali. Benaadir (also known as Coastal Somali) is spoken on the
Benadir Coast from
Cadale to south of
Marka, including
Mogadishu, and in the immediate hinterland. The coastal dialects have additional phonemes which don't exist in Standard Somali.
The
Digil and
Mirifle clans (sometimes called
Rahanweyn) live in the southern areas of Somalia. Recent research (Diriye Abdullahi, 2000) has shown that, although previously classified with Somali, their languages and dialects are incomprehensible to some Somali speakers. The most important language of the Digil and Mirifle is
Maay. Other languages in this category are Jiido, Dabare, Garre, and Central Tunni. Of all these, Jiido is the most incomprehensible to Somali speakers. One important aspect in which the languages of the Digil and Mirifle differ from Somali is the lack of pharyngeal sounds. The retroflex /ɖ/ is also replaced by /r/ in some positions.
Sounds/Phonology
Somali has 22 consonant phonemes, with at least one in every place of articulation described on the
IPA chart, except
epiglottal. It has five basic vowel sounds, each having a front and back variation, as well as long or short versions, giving distinct 20 pure vowel sounds. It also exhibits three tones, high, low and falling.
Grammar
Somali is an
agglutinative language, using a number of markers for case, gender and number. Characteristic differences between Somali and most
Indo-European languages include multiple forms of most personal pronouns, the use of particles to signify the focus of a sentence, extensive use of tone to denote differences in case and number and gender polarity, a phenomenon where the plural form of a word is the opposite gender of the singular.
Vocabulary
Somali contains a number of
loan words from
Arabic and
Persian, as well as from the former colonial languages
English and
Italian. As the Somalis are almost exclusively
Sunni muslims, Somali has borrowed much religious terminology from Arabic, although there are also Persian or Arabic loan words for everyday objects (for example Somali
albab-ka (the door), from the Arabic الباب
al baab).
A large number of neologisms were created after Somali was made the official language in 1972, to cope with concepts used in government and education.
Writing system
The Somali Latin alphabet used since 1972 was developed specifically for the Somali language using all letters of the English Latin alphabet except P, V and Z. There are no
diacritics or other special characters, although it includes 3 consonant
digraphs: DH, KH and SH. Tone isn't marked, front and back vowels are not distinguished, and a word-initial glottal stop isn't shown. Capital letters are used at the beginning of a sentence and for proper names.
A number of other scripts have been used for writing Somali in the past, most notable of which is
Osmanya, which served as the official writing script in Somalia for quite a number of years. The
Borama script and
Wadaad's writing were also used to write down the Somali language.
History
Before the colonial period, educated Somalis and religious fraternities either wrote in Arabic or used an ad hoc transliteration of Somali into Arabic script.
Sayyid Mohammed Abdullah Hassan's letter to a scholar, betraying him to the colonial powers, was in Arabic. The
Qur'an was taught throughout Somalia, so children were exposed to the Arabic alphabet from a young age. Material discovered in
1940, mainly ancient letters and tomb inscriptions, demonstrates that the Somali language was written with the Arabic alphabet, like the
Urdu and
Persian languages. But this wasn't certainly "codified", and questions remain about the extent of its use.
A number of attempts had been made from the 1920s onwards to standardize the language using a number of different alphabets.
Pamphlets explaining the new standardization were released to the public in a soccer stadium in
Mogadishu on October 10, 1972.
The first comprehensive dictionaries were produced in 1976, the
Qaamuus kooban ee af Soomaali ah and
Qaamuuska Af-Soomaaliga. Civil servants were required to pass language proficiency exams and in the
rural literacy campaign students were sent to rural areas to teach others the new script. Reportedly, by 1978 the majority of Somalis were literate, the fastest development of literacy in the history of Africa, although in recent times the civil war and resulting breakup of central control of Somalia has seen a decline in literacy and a stagnation of cultural development in the language.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Somali Language'.
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