Afar language

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Afar Qafár af
Spoken in:	Ethiopia, Eritrea and Djibouti
Total speakers:	1.4–1.5 million
Language family:	Afro-Asiatic  Cushitic   East Cushitic    Lowland East Cushitic     Saho-Afar      Afar
Language codes
ISO 639-1:	aa
ISO 639-2:	aar
ISO 639-3:	aar
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.

Afar (Qafár af) is a Lowland East Cushitic language spoken in Ethiopia, Eritrea and Djibouti. It is believed to have 1.5 million speakers, the Afar. The basic word order in Afar, like in other East Cushitic languages, is Subject Object Verb. Its speakers have a literacy rate of between one and three per cent. Its closest relative is the Saho language.

Contents 1 Phonology 1.1 Consonants 1.2 Vowels 1.3 Stress 2 Writing system 2.1 Latin alphabet 3 See also 4 Bibliography 5 External links

Phonology

Consonants

The consonants of the Afar language in the standard orthography are listed below (with IPA notation in brackets):

		Bilabial	Labiodental	Alveolar	Lateral	Palatal	Retroflex	Velar	Pharyngeal	Glottal
Stop	voiced	b  [b]		d  [d]			x  [ɖ]	g  [g]
	voiceless			t  [t]				k  [k]
Fricative	voiced								q  [ʕ]
	voiceless		f  [f]	s  [s]					c  [ħ]	h  [h]
Nasal		m  [m]		n  [n]
Approximant		w  [w]			l  [l]	y  [j]
Tap				r  [r]

Consonants which close syllables are released, e.g., akʰˡme.

Vowels

• short
  • a [ʌ]
  • e [e]
  • i [i]
  • o [o]
  • u [u]
• long
  • aa [aː]
  • ee [eː]
  • ii [iː]
  • oo [oː]
  • uu [uː]

Sentence final vowels of affirmative verbs are aspirated (and stressed), e.g., abeh = aˡbeʰ 'He did.' Sentence final vowels of negative verbs are not aspirated (nor stressed), e.g.,maabinna = ˡmaabinna 'He did not do.' Sentence final vowels of interrogative verbs are lengthened (and stressed), e.g. abee? = aˡbe: 'Did he do?'

Stress

Stress is word-final. Syllables are of the form (C)V(V)(C). One exception is the three-consonant cluster -str-.

Writing system

Afar may be written either with the Latin alphabet or Ge'ez script.

Latin alphabet

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

See also

• Afar people
• Afar Region

Bibliography

• Bliese, Loren F. (1976) Afar, in Bender, Lionel M. (ed.) The Non-Semitic Languages of Ethiopia. Michigan: African Studies Center, Michigan State University, 133–164.
• Bliese, Loren F. (1981) A generative grammar of Afar (Summer Institute of Linguistics publications in linguistics vol. 65). Dallas: Summer Institute of Linguistics / Arlington, Texas: University of Texas at Arlington.
• Colby, J.G. (1970) Notes on the northern dialect of the 'Afar language, Journal of Ethiopian Studies, 8, 1, 1–8.
• Hayward, R.J. and Parker, Enid M. (1985) Afar-English-French dictionary with Grammatical Notes in English, London, School of Oriental and African Studies.
• Morin, Didier (1997) Poésie traditionnelle des Afars (Langues et cultures africaines, 21 / SELAF vol. 363). Paris/Louvain: Peeters.
• Parker, Enid M. (2006), English-Afar Dictionary, Washington DC, Dunwoody Press
• Voigt, Rainer M. (1975) Bibliographie des Saho-Afar, Africana Marburgensia, vol. 8, 53–63.

External links

• Afar language at Ethnologue
• Afaraf - Méthode de langue afare (Much information about Afar, in French)
• Afar Sample at Language Museum
• The beginning of Genesis 1 in Afar at The Rosetta Project.
• PanAfriL10n page on Afar