Oromo language


Oromo is an Afroasiatic language belonging to the Cushitic branch. It is native to the Ethiopian state of Oromia and spoken predominantly by the Oromo people and neighbouring ethnic groups in the Horn of Africa.
With 33.8% Oromo speakers, followed by 29.3% of Amharic speakers, Oromo is the most widely spoken language in Ethiopia. It is also the most widely spoken Cushitic language and the fourth-most widely spoken language of Africa, after Arabic, Hausa and Swahili. Forms of Oromo are spoken as a first language by more than 35 million Oromo people in Ethiopia and by an additional half-million in parts of northern and eastern Kenya. It is also spoken by smaller numbers of emigrants in other African countries such as South Africa, Libya, Egypt and Sudan.
Oromo serves as the official working language of the Oromia, Harar and Dire Dawa regional states and of the Oromia Zone in the Amhara Region. It is a language of primary education in Oromia, Harar, Dire Dawa, Benishangul-Gumuz and Addis Ababa and of the Oromia Zone in the Amhara Region. It is used as internet language for federal websites along with Tigrinya.

Varieties

Ethnologue assigns five ISO codes to Oromo,
Blench concurs, dividing Oromo into four languages:
Some of the varieties of Oromo have been examined and classified.

Speakers

About 85 percent of Oromo speakers live in Ethiopia, mainly in Oromia Region. In addition, in Somalia there are also some speakers of the language. In Kenya, the Ethnologue also lists 722,000 speakers of Borana and Orma, two languages closely related to Ethiopian Oromo. Within Ethiopia, Oromo is the language with the largest number of native speakers.
Within Africa, Oromo is the language with the fourth most speakers, after Arabic, Swahili, and Hausa.
Besides first language speakers, a number of members of other ethnicities who are in contact with the Oromo speak it as a second language. See, for example, the Omotic-speaking Bambassi and the Nilo-Saharan-speaking Kwama in northwestern Oromiyaa.

Language policy

The Oromo people use a highly developed oral tradition and did not independently develop a writing system. In the 19th century, scholars began writing in the Oromo language using Latin script. In 1842, Johann Ludwig Krapf began translations of the Gospels of John and Matthew into Oromo, as well as a first grammar and vocabulary. The first Oromo dictionary and grammar was produced by German scholar Karl Tutschek in 1844. The first printing of a transliteration of Oromo language was in 1846 in a German newspaper in an article on the Oromo in Germany.
After Abyssinia annexed Oromo's territory, the writing interrupted its development into full-fledged writing instrument. The few works that had been published, most notably Onesimos Nesib's and Aster Ganno's translation of the Bible from the late 19th century, were written in the Ge'ez alphabet. Following the 1974 Revolution, the government undertook a literacy campaign in several languages, including Oromo, and publishing and radio broadcasts began in the language. All Oromo materials printed in Ethiopia at that time, such as the newspaper Bariisaa, Urjii and many others, were written in the traditional script.
Plans to introduce Oromo language instruction in the schools, however, were not realized until the government of Mengistu Haile Mariam was overthrown in 1991, except in regions controlled by the Oromo Liberation Front. With the creation of the regional state of Oromia under the new system of ethnic federalism in Ethiopia, it has been possible to introduce Oromo as the medium of instruction in elementary schools throughout the region, including areas where other ethnic groups live speaking their languages, and as a language of administration within the region. Since the OLF left the transitional Ethiopian government in the early 1990s, the Oromo Peoples' Democratic Organization continued developing Oromo in Ethiopia.
Within Kenya there has been radio broadcasting in Oromo on the Voice of Kenya since at least the 1980s. The Borana Bible in Kenya was printed in 1995 using the Latin alphabet, but not using the same spelling rules as in Ethiopian Qubee. The first comprehensive online Oromo dictionary was developed by the Jimma Times Oromiffa Group in cooperation with SelamSoft. Voice of America also broadcasts in Oromo alongside its other horn of Africa programs. Oromo and Qubee are currently utilized by the Ethiopian government's state radios, TV stations and regional government newspaper.

Phonology and orthography

Writing systems

Oromo is written with a Latin alphabet called Qubee which was formally adopted in 1991. Various versions of the Latin-based orthography had been used previously, mostly by Oromos outside of Ethiopia and by the OLF by the late 1970s. With the adoption of Qubee, it is believed more texts were written in the Oromo language between 1991 and 1997 than in the previous 100 years. In Kenya, the Borana and Waata also use Roman letters but with different systems.
The Sapalo script was an indigenous Oromo script invented by Sheikh Bakri Sapalo in the late 1950s, and used underground afterwards. Despite structural and organizational influences from Ge'ez and the Arabic script, it is a graphically-independent creation designed specifically for Oromo phonology. It is largely alphasyllabic in nature, but lacks the inherent vowel present in many such systems; in actual use, all consonant characters are obligatorially marked either with vowel signs or with separate marks used to denote long consonants and consonants not followed by a vowel.
The Arabic script has also been used intermittently in areas with Muslim populations.

Consonant and vowel phonemes

Like most other Ethiopian languages, whether Semitic, Cushitic, or Omotic, Oromo has a set of ejective consonants, that is, voiceless stops or affricates that are accompanied by glottalization and an explosive burst of air. Oromo has another glottalized phone that is more unusual, an implosive retroflex stop, "dh" in Oromo orthography, a sound that is like an English "d" produced with the tongue curled back slightly and with the air drawn in so that a glottal stop is heard before the following vowel begins. It is retroflex in most dialects, though it is not strongly implosive and may reduce to a flap between vowels. One source describes it as voiceless.
Oromo has the typical Eastern Cushitic set of five short and five long vowels, indicated in the orthography by doubling the five vowel letters. The difference in length is contrastive, for example, hara 'lake', haaraa 'new'. Gemination is also significant in Oromo. That is, consonant length can distinguish words from one another, for example, badaa 'bad', baddaa 'highland'.
In the Qubee alphabet, letters include the digraphs ch, dh, ny, ph, sh. Gemination is not obligatorily marked for digraphs, though some writers indicate it by doubling the first element: qopphaa'uu 'be prepared'. In the charts below, the International Phonetic Alphabet symbol for a phoneme is shown in brackets where it differs from the Oromo letter. The phonemes appear in parentheses because they are only found in recently adopted words. Note that there have been minor changes in the orthography since it was first adopted: was originally rendered, and there has been some confusion among authors in the use of and in representing the phonemes and, with some early works using for and for and even for different phonemes depending on where it appears in a word. This article uses consistently for and for.
FrontCentralBack
Closei, ii u, uu
Mide, ee o, oo
Opena aa

Tone and stress

Only the penultimate or final syllable of a root can have a high tone, and if the penultimate is high, the final must also be high; this implies that Oromo has a pitch-accent system rather than a tone system, although the rules are complex, so that "one can call Oromo a pitch-accent system in terms of the basic lexical representation of pitch, and a tone system in terms of its surface realization." The stressed syllable is perceived as the first syllable of a word with high pitch.

Grammar

Nouns

Gender

Like most other Afroasiatic languages, Oromo has two grammatical genders,
masculine and feminine, and all nouns belong to either one or the other.
Grammatical gender in Oromo enters into the grammar in the following ways:
Except in some southern dialects, there is nothing in the form of most nouns that indicates their gender. A small number of nouns pairs for people, however, end in -eessa and -eettii, as do adjectives when they are used as nouns: obboleessa 'brother', obboleettii 'sister', dureessa 'the rich one ', hiyyeettii 'the poor one '. Grammatical gender normally agrees with natural gender for people and animals; thus nouns such as Abbaa 'father', Ilma 'son', and sangaa 'ox' are masculine, while nouns such as haadha 'mother' and intala 'girl, daughter' are feminine. However, most names for animals do not specify biological gender.
Names of astronomical bodies are feminine: aduu 'sun', urjii 'star'. The gender of other inanimate nouns varies somewhat among dialects.

Number

Oromo has singular and plural number, but nouns that refer to multiple entities are not obligatorily plural.: nama 'man' namoota 'people', nama shan 'five men' namoota shan 'five people'. Another way of looking at this is to treat the "singular" form as unspecified for number.
When it is important to make the plurality of a referent clear, the plural form of a noun is used. Noun plurals are formed through the addition of suffixes. The most common plural suffix is -oota; a final vowel is dropped before the suffix, and in the western dialects, the suffix becomes -ota following a syllable with a long vowel: mana 'house', manoota 'houses', hiriyaa 'friend', hiriyoota 'friends', barsiisaa 'teacher', barsiisota 'teachers'. Among the other common plural suffixes are -wan, -een, and -an''; the latter two may cause a preceding consonant to be doubled: waggaa 'year', waggaawwan 'years', laga 'river', laggeen 'rivers', ilma 'son', ilmaan 'sons'.

Definiteness

Oromo has no indefinite articles, but it indicates definiteness with suffixes on the noun: -icha for masculine nouns and -ittii for feminine nouns. Vowel endings of nouns are dropped before these suffixes: karaa 'road', karicha 'the road', nama 'man', namicha/namticha 'the man', haroo 'lake', harittii 'the lake'. Note that for animate nouns that can take either gender, the definite suffix may indicate the intended gender: qaalluu 'priest', qaallicha 'the priest ', qallittii 'the priest '. The definite suffixes appear to be used less often than the in English, and they seem not to co-occur with the plural suffixes.

Case

Oromo noun has a citation form or base form that is used when the noun is the object of a verb, the object of a preposition or postposition, or a nominal predicative.
A noun may also appear in one of six other grammatical cases, each indicated by a suffix or the lengthening of the noun's final vowel. The case endings follow plural or definite suffixes if these appear. For some of the cases, there is a range of forms possible, some covering more than one case, and the differences in meaning among these alternatives may be quite subtle.
; Nominative
; Genitive
; Dative
; Instrumental
; Locative
; Ablative

Pronouns

Personal pronouns

In most languages, there is a small number of basic distinctions of person, number, and often gender that play a role within the grammar of the language. Oromo and English are such languages. We see these distinctions within the basic set of independent personal pronouns, for example, English I, Oromo ani; English they, Oromo 'isaani' and the set of possessive adjectives and pronouns, for example, English my, Oromo koo; English mine, Oromo kan koo. In Oromo, the same distinctions are also reflected in subject–verb agreement: Oromo verbs agree with their subjects; that is, the person, number, and gender of the subject of the verb are marked by suffixes on the verb. Because these suffixes vary greatly with the particular verb tense/aspect/mood, they are normally not considered to be pronouns and are discussed elsewhere in this article under verb conjugation.
In all of these areas of the grammar—independent pronouns, possessive adjectives, possessive pronouns, and subject–verb agreement—Oromo distinguishes seven combinations of person, number, and gender. For first and second persons, there is a two-way distinction between singular and plural, whereas for third person, there is a two-way distinction in the singular and a single form for the plural. Because Oromo has only two genders, there is no pronoun corresponding to English it; the masculine or feminine pronoun is used according to the gender of the noun referred to.
Oromo is a subject pro-drop language. That is, neutral sentences in which the subject is not emphasized do not require independent subject pronouns: kaleessa dhufne 'we came yesterday'.
The Oromo word that translates 'we' does not appear in this sentence, though the person and number are marked on the verb dhufne by the suffix -ne. When the subject in such sentences needs to be given prominence for some reason, an independent pronoun can be used: 'nuti kaleessa dhufne' 'we came yesterday'.
The table below gives forms of the personal pronouns in the different cases, as well as the possessive adjectives. For the first person plural and third person singular feminine categories, there is considerable variation across dialects; only some of the possibilities are shown.
The possessive adjectives, treated as separate words here, are sometimes written as noun suffixes. In most dialects there is a distinction between masculine and feminine possessive adjectives for first and second person. However, in the western dialects, the masculine forms are used in all cases. Possessive adjectives may take the case endings for the nouns they modify: ganda kootti 'to my village'.
EnglishBaseSubjectDativeInstrumentalLocativeAblativePossessive
adjectives
Iana, naani, annaa, naaf, nattinaannattinarraakoo, kiyya
you siatisii, siif, sittisiinsittisirraakee
heisainniisaa, isaaf, isattiisaatiinisattiisarraasaa
sheisii, ishii, isee, isheeisiin, etc.ishii, ishiif, ishiitti, etc.ishiin, etc.ishiitti, etc.ishiirraa, etc.sii, shii
wenunuti, nu'i, nuy, nunuu, nuuf, nuttinuunnuttinurraakeenna, keenya
you isinisiniisinii, isiniif, isinittiisiniinisinittiisinirraakeessan
theyisaanisaaniisaanii, isaaniif, isaanittiisaaniitiinisaanittiisaanirraasaani

As in languages such as French, Russian, and Turkish, the Oromo second person plural is also used as a polite singular form, for reference to people that the speaker wishes to show respect towards. This usage is an example of the so-called T-V distinction that is made in many languages. In addition, the third person plural may be used for polite reference to a single third person.
For possessive pronouns, Oromo adds the possessive adjectives to kan 'of': kan koo 'mine', kan kee 'yours', etc.

Reflexive and reciprocal pronouns

Oromo has two ways of expressing reflexive pronouns. One is to use the noun meaning 'self': of or if. This noun is inflected for case but, unless it is being emphasized, not for person, number, or gender: isheen of laalti 'she looks at herself', isheen ofiif makiinaa bitte 'she bought herself a car'.
The other possibility is to use the noun meaning 'head', mataa, with possessive suffixes: mataa koo 'myself', mataa kee 'yourself ', etc.
Oromo has a reciprocal pronoun wal that is used like of/if. That is, it is inflected for case but not person, number, or gender: wal jaalatu 'they like each other', kennaa walii bitan 'they bought each other gifts'.

Demonstrative pronouns

Like English, Oromo makes a two-way distinction between proximal and distal demonstrative pronouns and adjectives. Some dialects distinguish masculine and feminine for the proximal pronouns; in the western dialects the masculine forms are used for both genders. Unlike in English, singular and plural demonstratives are not distinguished, but, as for nouns and personal pronouns in the language, case is distinguished. Only the base and nominative forms are shown in the table below; the other cases are formed from the base form as for nouns, for example, sanatti 'at/on/in that'.
CaseProximal
Distal
Basekana
san
Nominativekuni
suni

Verbs

An Oromo verb consists minimally of a stem, representing the lexical meaning of the verb, and a suffix, representing tense or aspect and subject agreement. For example, in dhufne 'we came', dhuf- is the stem and -ne indicates that the tense is past and that the subject of the verb is first person plural.
As in many other Afroasiatic languages, Oromo makes a basic two-way distinction in its verb system between the two tensed forms, past and present. Each of these has its own set of tense/agreement suffixes. There is a third conjugation based on the present which has three functions: it is used in place of the present in subordinate clauses, for the jussive, and for the negative of the present. For example, deemne 'we went', deemna 'we go', akka deemnu 'that we go', haa deemnu 'let's go', hin deemnu 'we don't go'. There is also a separate imperative form: deemi 'go !'.''

Conjugation

The table below shows the conjugation in the affirmative and negative of the verb beek- 'know'. The first person singular present and past affirmative forms require the suffix -n to appear on the word preceding the verb or the word nan before the verb. The negative particle hin, shown as a separate word in the table, is sometimes written as a prefix on the verb.
For verbs with stems ending in certain consonants and suffixes beginning with consonants, there are predictable changes to one or the other of the consonants. The dialects vary a lot in the details, but the following changes are common.
b- + -t → bdqabda 'you have'
g- + -t → gddhugda 'you drink'
r- + -n → rrbarra 'we learn'
l- + -n → llgalla 'we enter'
q- + -t → qxdhaqxa 'you go'
s- + -t → ftbaas- 'take out', baafta 'you take out'
s- + -n → fnbaas- 'take out', baafna 'we take out'
t-/d-/dh-/x- + -n → nnbiti 'buy', binna 'we buy'; nyaadhaa 'eat', nyaanna 'we eat'
d- + -t → ddfid- 'bring', fidda 'you bring'
dh- + -t → tttaphadh- 'play', taphatta 'you play'
x- + -t → xxfix- 'finish', fixxa 'you finish'

Verbs whose stems end in two consonants and whose suffix begins with a consonant must insert a vowel to break up the consonants since the language does not permit sequences of three consonants. There are two ways this can happen: either the vowel i is inserted between the stem and the suffix, or the final stem consonants are switched and the vowel a is inserted between them. For example, arg- 'see', arga 'he sees', argina or agarra 'we see'; kolf- 'laugh', kolfe 'he laughed', kolfite or kofalte 'you laughed'.
Verbs whose stems end in the consonant ' belong to three different conjugation classes; the class is not predictable from the verb stem. It is the forms that precede suffixes beginning with consonants that differ from the usual pattern. The third person masculine singular, second person singular, and first person plural present forms are shown for an example verb in each class.
  1. du'- 'die': du'a 'he dies', duuta 'you die', duuna 'we die'
  2. beela'-, 'be hungry': beela'a 'he is hungry', beelofta 'you are hungry', beelofna 'we are hungry'
  3. dhaga'- 'hear': dhaga'a 'he hears', dhageessa 'you hear', dhageenya 'we hear'
The common verbs fedh- 'want' and godh- 'do' deviate from the basic conjugation pattern in that long vowels replace the geminated consonants that would result when suffixes beginning with t or n'' are added: fedha 'he wants', feeta 'you want', feena 'we want', feetu 'you want', hin feene 'didn't want', etc.
The verb dhuf- 'come' has the irregular imperatives koottu, koottaa. The verb deem- 'go' has, alongside regular imperative forms, the irregular imperatives deemi, deemaa.

Derivation

An Oromo verb root can be the basis for three derived voices, passive, causative, and autobenefactive, each formed with addition of a suffix to the root, yielding the stem that the inflectional suffixes are added to.
; Passive voice
; Causative voice
; Autobenefactive voice
The voice suffixes can be combined in various ways. Two causative suffixes are possible: ka'- 'go up', kaas- 'pick up', kaasis- 'cause to pick up'. The causative may be followed by the passive or the autobenefactive; in this case the s of the causative is replaced by f: deebi'- 'return ', deebis- 'return, answer', deebifam- 'be returned, be answered', deebifadh- 'get back for oneself'.
Another derived verbal aspect is the frequentative or "intensive," formed by copying the first consonant and vowel of the verb root and geminating the second occurrence of the initial consonant. The resulting stem indicates the repetition or intensive performance of the action of the verb. Examples: bul- 'spend the night', bubbul- 'spend several nights', cab- 'break', caccab- 'break to pieces, break completely'; dhiib- 'push, apply pressure', dhiddhiib- 'massage'.
The infinitive is formed from a verb stem with the addition of the suffix -uu. Verbs whose stems end in -dh change this to ch before the suffix. Examples: dhug- 'drink', dhuguu 'to drink'; ga'- 'reach', ga'uu 'to reach'; jedh- 'say', jechu 'to say'. The verb fedh- is exceptional; its infinitive is fedhuu rather than the expected fechuu. The infinitive behaves like a noun; that is, it can take any of the case suffixes. Examples: ga'uu 'to reach', ga'uuf 'in order to reach' ; dhug- 'drink', dhugam- 'be drunk', dhugamuu to be drunk', dhugamuudhaan 'by being drunk'.

Grammar

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