Maay

Maay
Spoken in	South somalia
speaker	approx. 1 million
Linguistic classification	Afro-Asian Cushy East Kushite Somali Maay
Official status
Official language in	Somalia
Language codes
ISO 639 -1	-
ISO 639 -2	cus
ISO 639-3	ymm

Maay ( Af-Maay ; also Maay-Maay ) is a variant of Somali that is mainly spoken in southern Somalia .

It differs significantly from the Maha Tiri / Af-Maxaa variant spoken in the north , on which Standard Somali is based. The speakers of the Maay include the Rahanweyn clan , the Somali Bantu and other groups that are also summarized as Sab . Information on the number of speakers varies between 594,000 and 1.5 million. The dialects Tunni, Jiidu, Dabarre and Garre are partly understood as dialects of the Maay, partly as independent Somali dialects.

Since the Maay has certain phonetic differences to the standard Somali, its own writing with the Latin alphabet was developed, the so-called Maay alphabet (Alif Maay) .

According to the Somali transitional constitution of 2004, Somali, with Maay like Maha Tiri, is the official language of Somalia.

Differences from standard Somali language

Unlike the Somali standard language, the Maay does not know the sounds X / ħ / and C / ʕ / . B, D, G and N are spoken more clearly, but not written twice; only LL and RR appear as double consonants. The sounds P, JH, GH, NG and YC (also NY or GN) / ɲ / occur only in Maay.

Web links

• Somali Bantu: Their History and Culture - Language and Literacy. In: The Center for Applied Linguistics' The Cultural Orientation Project. February 18, 2004, archived from the original on July 28, 2011 . 
• Somali Bantu: Their History and Culture - Some Basic Af Maay Expressions. In: The Center for Applied Linguistics' The Cultural Orientation Project. February 18, 2004, archived from the original on May 9, 2010 . 

Individual evidence

1. ^ The Transitional Federal Charter of the Somali Republic. In: somalia.cc. 2006, archived from the original on February 9, 2007 ; accessed on March 9, 2019 (English).