Aari (also rendered ''Ari'', ''Ara'', ''Aro'', ''Aarai'') is an

Omotic The Omotic languages are a group of languages spoken in southwestern Ethiopia, in the Omo River region. The Ge'ez script is used to write some of the Omotic languages, the Latin script for some others. They are fairly agglutinative and have co ...

language spoken by the

Aari people Aari or Ari are a tribal Omotic people indigenous to Omo Valley of Ethiopia. According to 2007 census there are 289,835 ethnic Aari in Ethiopia, which makes up around 0.29% of the country's total population. Nearly all Aari speak the South Omot ...

in the South Omo Zone of

Ethiopia Ethiopia, , om, Itiyoophiyaa, so, Itoobiya, ti, ኢትዮጵያ, Ítiyop'iya, aa, Itiyoppiya officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country in the Horn of Africa. It shares borders with Eritrea to the ...

Dialect The term dialect (from Latin , , from the Ancient Greek word , 'discourse', from , 'through' and , 'I speak') can refer to either of two distinctly different types of linguistic phenomena: One usage refers to a variety of a language that is ...

s are Bako, Biyo (Biya), Laydo, Seyki, Shangama, Sido, Wubahamer, Zeddo.

History

The Aari people suffered considerable pressures to assimilate after the conquest of the Omo River region by the

Ethiopian Empire The Ethiopian Empire (), also formerly known by the exonym Abyssinia, or just simply known as Ethiopia (; Amharic and Tigrinya: ኢትዮጵያ , , Oromo: Itoophiyaa, Somali: Itoobiya, Afar: ''Itiyoophiyaa''), was an empire that historica ...

in the late 1800s, which resulted in the widespread adoption the

Amharic Amharic ( or ; (Amharic: ), ', ) is an Ethiopian Semitic language, which is a subgrouping within the Semitic branch of the Afroasiatic languages. It is spoken as a first language by the Amharas, and also serves as a lingua franca for all oth ...

language there. Nevertheless, the Aari language survived; today, many Aari are also fluent in Amharic.

Current status

Aari had a population of 285,000 first language speakers in 2007, of whom 129,350 were

monolingual Monoglottism (Greek μόνος ''monos'', "alone, solitary", + γλῶττα , "tongue, language") or, more commonly, monolingualism or unilingualism, is the condition of being able to speak only a single language, as opposed to multilingualism. ...

. 13,300 second language users were also recorded in 2007. The ethnic population was 289,835 as of 2007. Aari is used at home and at local markets. The size of the Aari tribe is growing, and thus the Aari language has seen an increase in language use and development in recent years. The language is learned by all of the Aari people and some members of neighboring tribes as well. Many Aari speakers also use

, the official language of

. Although it is widely spoken by Aari people,

literacy Literacy in its broadest sense describes "particular ways of thinking about and doing reading and writing" with the purpose of understanding or expressing thoughts or ideas in Writing, written form in some specific context of use. In other wo ...

in the language low. An

orthography An orthography is a set of conventions for writing a language, including norms of spelling, hyphenation, capitalization, word breaks, emphasis, and punctuation. Most transnational languages in the modern period have a writing system, and ...

has been developed and rolled out in local schools; today, all schools in the two

districts A district is a type of administrative division that, in some countries, is managed by the local government. Across the world, areas known as "districts" vary greatly in size, spanning regions or counties, several municipalities, subdivisions ...

where it is spoken teach Aari writing and literature as a subject. An Aari-English-Amharic dictionary has also been published. A translation of the

New Testament The New Testament grc, Ἡ Καινὴ Διαθήκη, transl. ; la, Novum Testamentum. (NT) is the second division of the Christian biblical canon. It discusses the teachings and person of Jesus, as well as events in first-century Chris ...

into Aari was published in 1997.

Dialects

There are nine dialects of the Aari language, each dialect being associated with a former chiefdom. While these dialects are

mutually intelligible In linguistics, mutual intelligibility is a relationship between languages or dialects in which speakers of different but related varieties can readily understand each other without prior familiarity or special effort. It is sometimes used as a ...

with one another, some also have distinct features. The following are dialects of Aari. Alternate names are given in parenthesis. *Bako (Baco) *Biyo (Bio) *Laydo *Seyki *Shangama *Sido *Wubahamer (Ubamer) *Zeddo

Phonology

* Stop sounds /p b/ can have allophones as fricatives � β * /ʋ/ can also be heard as labio-velar Aari has two tones, high and low.

Grammar

Aari is a subject-object-verb language (SOV), meaning that the English sentence "the cow (subject) ate (verb) the grass (object)" would translate back from Aari as "cow (subject) grass (object) ate (verb)."

Verbs

In Aari, the

suffix In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns, adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs. Suffixes can carr ...

-''sis'' can be applied to the

stem Stem or STEM may refer to: Plant structures * Plant stem, a plant's aboveground axis, made of vascular tissue, off which leaves and flowers hang * Stipe (botany), a stalk to support some other structure * Stipe (mycology), the stem of a mushro ...

of most verbs with a causative meaning. Doing so will increase the verb's valency. When applied to an intransitive verb, it will make the verb transitive. For example, the intransitive verb stem ''daqal-'' "become bad" with the marker -''sis'' becomes ''daqalsis-'', is transitive and has the causative meaning "make bad". The transitive verb ''kam-'' "pick up" with -''sis'' becomes ''kamsis-'', is trivalent and has the meaning "cause to pick up".

Example verb conjugation

Verb stem ''buruk'', meaning "boil." The causative stem of ''buruk-'' is ''burukš-'', making this verb irregular. "To boil" is ''burukinti.'' This consists of the stem ''buruk'' with the

infinitive Infinitive ( abbreviated ) is a linguistics term for certain verb forms existing in many languages, most often used as non-finite verbs. As with many linguistic concepts, there is not a single definition applicable to all languages. The word is de ...

(also called the verbal noun suffix) ''-inti.'' The causative third-person singular perfect (

past tense The past tense is a grammatical tense whose function is to place an action or situation in the past. Examples of verbs in the past tense include the English verbs ''sang'', ''went'' and ''washed''. Most languages have a past tense, with some ha ...

) of ''burukinti'' is ''búrukse'' ("it boiled"). The

present tense The present tense ( abbreviated or ) is a grammatical tense whose principal function is to locate a situation or event in the present time. The present tense is used for actions which are happening now. In order to explain and understand present ...

is ''búrukše'', "he boils omething" A sentence can be formed with the verb ''buruk'' by adding a

noun A noun () is a word that generally functions as the name of a specific object or set of objects, such as living creatures, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, or ideas.Example nouns for: * Living creatures (including people, alive, ...

as an

object Object may refer to: General meanings * Object (philosophy), a thing, being, or concept ** Object (abstract), an object which does not exist at any particular time or place ** Physical object, an identifiable collection of matter * Goal, an ...

(something being boiled). ''Búrukše...'' means "he boiled...", so "he boiled water" would be ''noqá búrukše''. Note that in Aari the object comes before the verb; ''búrukše noqá'' is not correct.

Orthography

Aari uses a

Latin script The Latin script, also known as Roman script, is an alphabetic writing system based on the letters of the classical Latin alphabet, derived from a form of the Greek alphabet which was in use in the ancient Greek city of Cumae, in southern ...

and an Ethiopic script, but below 10% of Aari speakers can read. Schooling is not well developed in this region of the world, so Aari is mostly spoken rather than written down and most speakers have no use for the language's two writing systems. However, despite this, there are schools in numerous villages and there are efforts to promote education and literacy. At present, 8% of second language users are literate in Aari. The

was translated into Aari in 1997. Additionally, some other books have been translated into Aari to help promote literacy; Genesis Exodus, 1 & 2 Samuel, 1 & 2 Kings, Esther, Ruth, Psalms, Leviticus, Joshua and Judges have all been translated into Aari, but at present only Genesis has been published. Some external organizations are working with Aari churches to write a complete Aari Bible and increase the literacy rate.

Vocabulary

*''laqimiu?'' - how are you? *''laqimi'' - reply to ''laqimiu'' *''noqá'' - water *''waakí'' - cattle *''zémma'' - morning *''gurdá'' - fence *''sónqa'' - kiss *''tóoni'' - waste *''wókka'' - axe * ''endefsi'' - brother * ''enani'' - sister * ''abiya'' - father * ''emiya'' - mother * ''hanna'' - you * ''etsimi'' - food * ''fecha'' - land * ''kiee'' - husband * ''ekina'' - cabbage * ''hami '' - farm land

Bibliography

* Richard Hayward (1990). "Notes on the Aari Language,
''Omotic Language Studies''
Richard Hayward (editor), pp. 425–493. London:

SOAS SOAS University of London (; the School of Oriental and African Studies) is a public research university in London, England, and a member institution of the federal University of London. Founded in 1916, SOAS is located in the Bloomsbury are ...

. *Marie Iversdatter Røsok (2016). "The Sound Pattern of Aari". University of Oslo.

References

External links

The Aari people
(

missionary A missionary is a member of a Religious denomination, religious group which is sent into an area in order to promote its faith or provide services to people, such as education, literacy, social justice, health care, and economic development.Tho ...

report) *

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-R ...

information o
Aari

Aari basic lexicon at the Global Lexicostatistical Database

Listen to a sample of Aari from Global Recordings Network

New Testament in Aari
{{authority control Languages of Ethiopia Aroid languages Subject–object–verb languages