Languages of Ethiopia

Languages of Ethiopia

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Languages of Ethiopia
Official language(s) Amharic[1]
Main language(s) Amharic (32.7%), Oromo (31.6%)
Main foreign language(s) English
Sign in Amharic at the Ethiopian millennium celebration.

There are 90 individual languages of Ethiopia according to Ethnologue[2] (some 77 according to the 1994 census). Most belong to the Afro-Asiatic language family (Semitic, Cushitic, and Omotic), with Nilo-Saharan languages also spoken by the nation's Nilotic ethnic minorities.

Charles A. Ferguson proposed the Ethiopian Language Area, characterized by shared grammatical and phonological features in 1976. This language area (sprachbund) includes the Afro-Asiatic languages of Ethiopia, not the Nilo-Saharan languages. In 2000, Mauro Tosco questioned the validity of Ferguson's original proposal. There is still no agreement among scholars on this point, but Tosco has at least weakened Ferguson's original claim.

English is the most widely spoken foreign language and is the medium of instruction in secondary schools and universities. Amharic was the language of primary school instruction, but has been replaced in many areas by local languages such as Oromifa and Tigrinya.

After the fall of the Derg regime in 1991, the new constitution of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia granted all ethnic groups the right to develop their languages and to establish mother tongue primary education systems. This is a marked change to the language policies of previous governments in Ethiopia.

Contents

Languages

According to the 2007 Ethiopian census, the largest first languages are: Oromigna 24,929,268 speakers or 33.8% of the total population;[3] Amharic 21,631,370 or 29.33%[3] (official language[4]); Somali 4,609,274 or 6.25%;[3] Tigrinya 4,324,476 or 5.86%;[3] Sidamo 2,981,471 or 4.84%;[3] Wolaytta 1,627,784 or 2.21%,[3] Gurage 1,481,783 or 2.01%;[3] and Afar 1,281,278 or 1.74%.[3] Widely-spoken foreign languages include Arabic (official[4]), English (official; major foreign language taught in schools[4]), and Italian (spoken by European minority).

Afro-Asiatic languages

Afro-Asiatic languages

Nilo-Saharan

In Ethiopia, the term "Nilotic" is often used to refer to Nilo-Saharan languages and their communities. However, in academic linguistics, "Nilotic" is only part of "Nilo-Saharan", a segment of the larger Nilo-Saharan family.

Nilo-Saharan

Unclassified

Endangered languages

A number of Ethiopian languages are endangered: they may not be spoken in one or two generations and may become extinct, victims of language death, as Weyto has and Ongota soon will. The factors that contribute to language death are complex, so it is not easy to estimate which or how many languages are most vulnerable. Hudson wrote, "Assuming that a language with fewer than 10,000 speakers is endangered, or likely to become extinct within a generation", there are 22 endangered languages in Ethiopia (1999:96). However, a number of Ethiopian languages never have had populations even that high, so it is not clear that this is an appropriate way to calculate the number of endangered languages in Ethiopia. The real number may be lower or higher. The new language policies after the 1991 revolution have strengthened the use of a number of languages. Publications specifically about endangered languages in Ethiopia include: Appleyard (1998), Hayward (1988), Zelealem (1998a,b, 2004)

References

  1. ^ "Ethiopian Constitution". Article 5 Ethiopian constitution. APAP. http://www.apapeth.org/Documents/EthiopianLaws.html. Retrieved 3 December 2011. 
  2. ^ Ethnologue page on Ethiopian languages
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h "Statistical Tables for the 2007 Population and Housing Census of Ethiopia: Country Level". Central Statistical Agency. 2007. pp. 91–92. http://www.csa.gov.et/index.php?option=com_rubberdoc&view=doc&id=264&format=raw&Itemid=521. Retrieved 2011-08-12. 
  4. ^ a b c Ethiopia entry at The World Factbook

Further reading

  • Appleyard, David. 1998. Language Death: The Case of Qwarenya (Ethiopia). In Endangered Languages in Africa, edited by Matthias Brenzinger. Köln: Rüdiger Köppe.
  • Ferguson, Charles. 1976. The Ethiopian Language Area. Language In Ethiopia, ed. by M. Lionel Bender, J. Donald Bowen, R.L. Cooper, Charles A. Ferguson, pp. 63–76. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Hayward, Richard J. 1998. The Endangered Languages of Ethiopia: What’s at Stake for the Linguist? In Endangered Languages in Africa, edited by Matthias Brenzinger, 17–38. Köln: Rüdiger Köppe.
  • Hudson, Grover. 1999. Linguistic Analysis of the 1994 Ethiopian Census. Northeast African Studies Vol. 6, No. 3 (New Series), pp. 89–108.
  • Hudson, Grover. 2004. Languages of Ethiopia and Languages of the 1994 Ethiopian Census. Aethiopica: International Journal of Ethiopian and Eritrean Studies 7: 160–172.
  • Leslau, Wolf. 1965. An annotated bibliography of the Semitic languages of Ethiopia. The Hague: Mouton.
  • Tosco, Mauro. 2000. Is There an ‘Ethiopian Language Area’? Anthropological Linguistics 42,3: 329–365.
  • Unseth, Peter. 1990. Linguistic bibliography of the Non-Semitic languages of Ethiopia. East Lansing: African Studies Center, Michigan State University. (Classification charts, pp. 21 ff.)
  • Zelealem Leyew. 1998a. An Ethiopian Language on the Verge of Extinction. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 134: 69–84.
  • Zelealem Leyew. 1998b. Some Structural Signs of Obsolescence in K’emant. In Endangered Languages in Africa. Edited by Matthias Brenzinger. Köln: Rüdiger Köppe.
  • Zelealem Leyew. 2004. The fate of endangered languages in Ethiopia. On the margins of nations : endangered languages and linguistic rights. proceedings of the eighth FEL Conference, Eds. Joan A. Argenter & Robert McKenna Brown, 35–45. Bath: Foundation for Endangered Languages.

External links

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