Amharic as a Lingua Franca in Ethiopia (Amharic, a Creole Language between Ethiosemitic and Cushitic Lamguages) (original) (raw)
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Amharic as lingua franca in Ethiopia
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This article provides an outline of the development of Amharic towards a lingua franca in Ethiopian towns. After a brief description of the sociolinguistic situation in Ethiopia, several hypotheses on the origin of Ethiosemitic in general and of Amharic in particular are discussed. In connection with the origin of Amharic the question regarding the existence of an Amhara ethnic identity is raised. Finally, sociolinguistic data regarding the recent use of Amharic in multi-ethnic societies of Ethiopian towns are presented and discussed.
Daats'íin, a newly identified undocumented language of western Ethiopia A preliminary examination
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Diversity in African Languages contains a selection of revised papers from the 46th Annual Conference on African Linguistics, held at the University of Oregon. Most chapters focus on single languages, addressing diverse aspects of their phonology, morphology, semantics, syntax, information structure, or historical development. These chapters represent nine different genera: Mande, Gur, Kwa, Edoid, Bantu, Nilotic, Gumuzic, Cushitic, and Omotic. Other chapters investigate a mix of languages and families, moving from typological issues to sociolinguistic and inter-ethnic factors that affect language and accent switching. Some chapters are primarily descriptive, while others push forward the theoretical understanding of tone, semantic problems, discourse related structures, and other linguistic systems. The papers on Bantu languages reflect something of the internal richness and continued fascination of the family for linguists, as well as maturation of research on the family. The distr...
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This article gives a concise overview about the main features of the Ethiopian Linguistic Area and discusses possible extensions.
Daatsʼíin, a newly identified undocumented language of western Ethiopia: A preliminary examination
Daatsʼíin is a heretofore unknown language spoken in western Ethiopia near the border with the Republic of Sudan. The Daatsʼíin people live in both Ethiopia and the Republic of Sudan but only those in Ethiopia still speak the Daatsʼíin language. The speakers of Daatsʼíin may number around 1,000 but may be as few as 300-500. This paper provides the first-ever overview of basic aspects of Daatsʼíin phonology, morphology and syntax. The overview documents that Daatsʼíin is structurally similar to the nearby Gumuz languages (of possible Nilo-Saharan affiliation) in many respects, including vocabulary, bound pronominals with a distinct tone for S versus A arguments, and incorporated nouns. However, there are a few differences, mainly in structure and certain tense-aspect categories of the verb word.