Saho (language)

Saho (also Sao, Shaho, Shoho or Shiho )
Spoken in	Eritrea , Ethiopia
speaker	205,000 (as of 2001)
Linguistic ; classification	Afro-Asian languages Cushitic languages East Kushite Lowland East Kushite Saho-Afar Saho ;
Official status
Recognized minority / ; regional language in	Eritrea
Language codes
ISO 639 -1	-
ISO 639 -2	cus
ISO 639-3	ssy

Saho (also Sao , Shaho , Shoho or Shiho ) is a language spoken by the Saho in southern Eritrea and in the Ethiopian- Eritrean border area . Together with the closely related Afar, it forms the Saho-Afar branch of the East Cushitic languages , which in turn are part of the Afro-Asian language family .

Speech situation

Saho is spoken by around 205,000 people as their mother tongue, of which around 180,000 live in Eritrea and around 23,000 in Ethiopia. The dialect Irob is spoken exclusively in Ethiopia. Most speakers belong to the Saho ethnic group of the same name , but some Saho-speaking tribes are viewed by some ethnologists as assimilated members of other ethnic groups, although they refer to themselves as Saho .

In the respective border areas, the Saho is in contact with the closely related Afar, with Tigrinya and Tigre . Saho speakers use Arabic as a lingua franca .

In Eritrea, Saho is recognized as one of nine “national languages” that are formally regarded as equal (in fact, Tigrinya and Arabic have the greatest importance as official languages). The Eritrean constitution has been translated into Saho and the national radio station broadcasts weekly in that language.

Research history

In the 19th century, Saho and other Cushitic languages in linguistics were initially associated with the Semitic languages of Ethiopia , as Heinrich Georg August Ewald described Saho as a "rooted Semitic language". Among other things, Leo Reinisch dealt with the Saho.

Web links

Information about Saho from www.ethnologue.com ( English )
allsaho.com - Information about Saho from native speakers ( English, Arabic )
allsaho.com - Site with spoken poetry in Saho (mp3) ( English, Arabic )

Individual evidence

↑ ^a ^b ^c Marie-Claude Simeone-Senelle: Les langues en Erythrée , in: Chroniques Yéménites 8, 2000 (French)
^ Rainer Voigt: Semitohamitische Philologie and comparative grammar: History of the comparative Semitohamitistik , in: Sylvain Auroux (Hrsg.): Geschichte der Sprachwissenschaften. An international handbook for the development of language research from the beginnings to the present , Volume 2, de Gruyter 2001, ISBN 978-3-11-016735-1 (pp. 1319, 1321)

[CY-1] Marie-Claude Simeone-Senelle: Les langues en Erythrée , in: Chroniques Yéménites 8, 2000 (French)

[2] Rainer Voigt: Semitohamitische Philologie and comparative grammar: History of the comparative Semitohamitistik , in: Sylvain Auroux (Hrsg.): Geschichte der Sprachwissenschaften. An international handbook for the development of language research from the beginnings to the present , Volume 2, de Gruyter 2001, ISBN 978-3-11-016735-1 (pp. 1319, 1321)