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Afar (Template:Langx; also known as ’Afar af, Afaraf, Qafar af) is an Afroasiatic language belonging to the Cushitic branch. It is spoken by the Afar people inhabiting Djibouti, Eritrea and Ethiopia.
ClassificationEdit
Afar is classified within the Cushitic branch of the Afroasiatic family. It is further categorized in the Lowland East Cushitic sub-group, along with Saho and Somali.<ref name="Lewis11">Template:Cite book</ref> Its closest relative is the Saho language.<ref name=e27/>
Geographic distributionEdit
The Afar language is spoken as a mother tongue by the Afar people in Djibouti, Eritrea, and the Afar Region of Ethiopia.<ref name=e27/>
According to Ethnologue, there are Template:Sigfig total Afar speakers. Of these, 1,280,000 were recorded in the 2007 Ethiopian census, with 906,000 monolinguals registered in the 1994 census.<ref name=e27/>
Official statusEdit
In Djibouti, Afar is a recognized national language.<ref name="Cwfbdj">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> It is also one of the broadcasting languages of the Radio Television of Djibouti public network.
In Eritrea, Afar is recognized as one of nine national languages which formally enjoy equal status although Tigrinya and Arabic are by far of greatest significance in official usage. There are daily broadcasts on the national radio and a translated version of the Eritrean constitution. In education, however, Afar speakers prefer Arabic – which many of them speak as a second language – as the language of instruction.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>
In the Afar Region of Ethiopia, Afar is also recognized as an official working language.<ref name="Llicuv">Template:Cite book</ref> Since 2020, Afar is one of the five official working languages of Ethiopia.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
PhonologyEdit
ConsonantsEdit
The consonants of the Afar language in the standard orthography are listed below in angle brackets (preceded by the IPA notation):
Voiceless stop consonants which close syllables are released, e.g., {{#invoke:IPA|main}}.
Vowels and stressEdit
Sentence final vowels of affirmative verbs are aspirated (and stressed), e.g.
- Template:Langx = {{#invoke:IPA|main}} 'He did.'
Sentence final vowels of negative verbs are not aspirated (nor stressed), e.g.
- Template:Langx = {{#invoke:IPA|main}} 'He did not do.'
Sentence final vowels of interrogative verbs are lengthened (and stressed), e.g.
- Template:Langx = {{#invoke:IPA|main}} 'Did he do?'
Otherwise, stress in word-final.
PhonotacticsEdit
Possible syllable shapes are V, VV, VC, VVC, CV, CVV and CVVC.<ref>Template:Cite thesis</ref>
SyntaxEdit
As in most other Cushitic languages, the basic word order in Afar is subject–object–verb.<ref name=e27/>
Writing systemEdit
In Ethiopia, Afar used to be written with the Ge'ez script (Ethiopic script). Since around 1849, the Latin script has been used in other areas to transcribe the language.<ref name=e27/> Additionally, Afar is also transcribed using the Arabic script.<ref name="Afdal">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
In the early 1970s, two Afar intellectuals and nationalists, Dimis and Redo, formalized the Afar alphabet. Known as Qafar Feera, the orthography is based on the Latin script.<ref name="Omafr">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
Officials from the Institut des Langues de Djibouti, the Eritrean Ministry of Education, and the Ethiopian Afar Language Studies and Enrichment Center have since worked with Afar linguists, authors and community representatives to select a standard orthography for Afar from among the various existing writing systems used to transcribe the language.<ref name="Afdal"/>
Latin alphabetEdit
| A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z |
| a | ba | ca | da | e | fa | ga | ha | i | ja | ka | la | ma | na | o | pa | qa | ra | sa | ta | u | va | wa | xa | ya | za |
|CitationClass=web }}</ref>
| A | B | T | S | E | C | K | X | I | D | Q | R | F | G | O | L | M | N | U | W | H | Y |
| a | ba | ta | sa | e | ca | ka | xa | i | da | qa | ra | fa | ga | o | la | ma | na | u | wa | ha | ya |
|CitationClass=web }}</ref>
See alsoEdit
NotesEdit
BibliographyEdit
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External linksEdit
Template:Incubator Template:Sister project
- World Atlas of Language Structures information on Qafar
- Afar language learning web site (Much information about Afar, in English and French)
- Omniglot – Afar (ʿAfár af)
Template:Languages of Djibouti Template:Languages of Eritrea Template:Languages of Ethiopia Template:Cushitic languages Template:Afroasiatic languages Template:Authority control