Silt'e (language)

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Silt'e

Spoken in

Ethiopia
speaker 824,764 (1998 census)
Linguistic
classification
Language codes
ISO 639 -1

-

ISO 639 -2

sem

ISO 639-3

deputy

Silt'e ( ስልጥኘ [siltʼiɲɲǝ] or የስልጤ አፍ [jǝsiltʼe af] ) is a Semitic language spoken by the Silt'e in south-central Ethiopia .

Dialects

Dialects of the Silt'e are Azarnat , Enneqor (Inneqor), Ulbarag (Urbareg) and Wolane .

Phonology

Silt'e has a number of consonants that are quite typical of Ethiopian Semitic languages. In addition to voiceless and voiced consonants, there are ejective consonants .

The vowels in the silt'e differ significantly from the typical seven vowels in languages ​​such as Amharic , Tigrinya and Old Ethiopian . The five short and five long vowels occur in the silt'e, which are typical of the neighboring East Cushitic languages from which the silt'e system may originate. There is a considerable allophone difference in the short vowels, especially for a; the most abundant of allophone / ⁠ a ⁠ / , [⁠ ə ⁠] is shown in the table. All short vowels can be devoiced before a paragraph.

The tables below show the phonemes of the silt'e. This article uses a modification of the system used by linguists working on Ethiopian Semitic languages ​​to represent the silt'e consonants. However, this system is somewhat different from the International Phonetic Alphabet . Where the IPA mark is different, this is made clear by square brackets. The characters / ⁠ p ⁠ / and / ⁠ ʔ ⁠ / (glottal stop) are written in brackets because they only play a minor role; / ⁠ p ⁠ / only dialect Azarnat occurs in a few words in and / ⁠ ʔ ⁠ / is often, as in Amharic, omitted.

Consonants
Bilabial /
Labiodental 		Dental /
Alveolar 		Postalveolar /
Palatal 		Velar Glottal
Plosives unvoiced (p) ​t​ ​k​ (ʔ)
voiced ​b​ ​d​ ​G​
Ejective tʼ k '
Affricates unvoiced č [ʧ]
voiced ǧ [ʤ]
Ejective čʼ [ʧʼ]
Fricative unvoiced ​f​ ​s​ š [ʃ] ​H​
voiced ​z​ ž [ʒ]
nasal ​m​ ​n​ ñ [ɲ]
Approximant ​w​ ​l​ y [j]
Flap ​r​
Vowels
Beginning center The End
High i, ii u, uu
center e, ee a [⁠ ǝ ⁠] o, oo
Low aa

font

Since the 1980s at the latest , Silt'e has been written with the Ethiopian script , which was actually developed for the now extinct ancient Ethiopian language and is also used for Amharic and Tigrinya .
The Ethiopian script distinguishes between seven vowel qualities, so it is difficult to write a language with it that has ten different vowels (five long and five short).

In practice this is unlikely to affect understanding because there are relatively few minimal pairs that differ in vowel quantity.

In the written silt'e, the seven Ethiopian vowels are mapped to the ten silt'e vowels as follows.

  • ä → a: አለፈ alafa 'he passed on'
  • u → u, uu: ሙት courage 'death', must 'thing'
  • i →
    • ii: ኢን iin 'eye'
    • i at the end of the word: መሪ mari 'friend'
    • i at the end of the stem of a noun: መሪከ marika 'his friend'
    • i as a suffix for an impersonal verb in the perfect tense: ባሊ baali 'the people said'; በባሊም babaalim 'even when people said'
  • a → aa: ጋራሽ gaaraaš 'your (f.) house'
  • e → e, ee: ኤፌ eeffe 'he covered'
  • ǝ →
    • i (except the above): እንግር ingir 'foot'
    • Consonant not followed by a vowel: አስሮሽት asroošt 'twelve'
  • o → o, oo: ቆጬ k'oč'e 'turtle', k'ooč'e 'he cuts'

Web links

literature

  • Cohen, Marcel (1931): Études d'éthiopien méridional. Société Asiatique, Collection d'ouvrages orientaux. Paris: Geuthner.
  • Gutt, EHM and Hussein Mohammed (1997): Silt'e - Amharic - English dictionary (with clear grammar by EA Gutt). Addis Ababa: Addis Ababa University Press.
  • Gutt, EA. (1983): Studies in the phonology of Silti. Journal of Ethiopian Studies 16, pp. 37-73.
  • Leslau, W. (1979): Etymological Dictionary of Gurage (Ethiopic). 3 vols. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz. ISBN 3-447-02041-5