Yemsa is the language of the
Yem people of the former
Kingdom of Yamma
The Kingdom of Yamma, also spelled Yemma, was a small kingdom located in what is now Ethiopia. It lay in the angle formed by the Omo and the Jimma Gibe Rivers; to the west lay the Kingdom of Jimma and to the south the Kingdom of Garo. Three mou ...
, known as the Kingdom of Janjero traditionally. It is a member of the
Omotic
The Omotic languages are a group of languages spoken in southwestern Ethiopia, in the Omo River region and southeastern Sudan in Blue Nile State. The Geʽez script is used to write some of the Omotic languages, the Latin script for some others. T ...
group of languages, most closely related to
Kafa. It is distinctive in having different systems of vocabulary depending on social status, rather like
Japanese
Japanese may refer to:
* Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia
* Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan
* Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture
** Japanese diaspor ...
and
Javanese. The estimated number of speakers varies wildly from about 1000 (Bender, 1976) to half a million (Aklilu, 1993).
Yemsa is the main language spoken in
Yem special woreda
Yem Zone is one of the Zones of Ethiopia, zones in the Central Ethiopia Regional State. Yem is named for the Yem people, Yem, people whose homeland lies in this zone, (see Kingdom of Yamma). Yem is bordered on the west and north by the Oromia Reg ...
,
SNNPR
The Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples' Region (often abbreviated as SNNPR; ) was a regional state in southwestern Ethiopia. It was formed from the merger of five ''kililoch'', called Regions 7 to 11, following the regional council ele ...
.
The Fuga dialect is distinct enough to perhaps be a different language.
Sample verb forms
* - I do
* - we do
* - you (singular) do
* - he does
* - she does
[''African Languages: An Introduction'', edited by Bernd Heine & Derek Nurse, Cambridge University Press, 2000.]
Notes
External links
*
World Atlas of Language Structures
The World Atlas of Language Structures (WALS) is a database of structural (phonological, grammatical, lexical) properties of languages gathered from descriptive materials. It was first published by Oxford University Press as a book with CD-RO ...
information o
YemsaYemsa basic lexicon at the Global Lexicostatistical Database
North Omotic languages
Languages of Ethiopia
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