Dirasha (also known as Ghidole, Diraasha, Dirayta, Gidole, Gardulla, Dhirasha) is a member of the
Cushitic
The Cushitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They are spoken primarily in the Horn of Africa, with minorities speaking Cushitic languages to the north in Egypt and the Sudan, and to the south in Kenya and Tanzania. As o ...
branch of the
Afro-Asiatic family. It is spoken in the
Omo region 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 ...
, in the hills west of
Lake Chamo, around the town of
Gidole.
A number of speakers also use
Oromo or
Konso. According to Wondwosen, the "Dirasha" is the name of the people, and the name of the language is given variously as "Dirashitata, Dirayta and Diraytata" (2006:3,4).
The language has a three
ejective consonant phonemes and two
implosive consonant
Implosive consonants are a group of stop consonants (and possibly also some affricates) with a mixed glottalic ingressive and pulmonic egressive airstream mechanism.''Phonetics for communication disorders.'' Martin J. Ball and Nicole Müller. R ...
phonemes, fitting the pattern of the
Ethiopian Language Area
The Ethiopian language area is a hypothesized linguistic area that was first proposed by Charles A. Ferguson (1970, 1976), who posited a number of phonological and morphosyntactic features that were found widely across Ethiopia and Eritrea, incl ...
. It has two tones and five vowels. Duration (or
gemination
In phonetics and phonology, gemination (), or consonant lengthening (from Latin 'doubling', itself from ''gemini'' 'twins'), is an articulation of a consonant for a longer period of time than that of a singleton consonant. It is distinct from s ...
) is distinctive for both consonants and vowels (Wondwosen 2006:9,10).
Phonology
Phonetic Inventory: Consonant IPA Symbols
Dirayta transcription utilizes symbols that differ from those of the traditional IPA chart. Each ejective may be written two ways.
When /n/ and /ʔ/ occur as /nʔ/, they contract to form ŋ. /n/ and /ʔ/ must occur in that sequence, with no intervening vowels or consonants.
Phonetic Inventory: Vowel IPA Symbols
Low and High Tones
-Dirayta is a 2-tone language.
-Low Tone: Absence of accentual markings
-
High Tone: Represented by acute accent diacritic above vowel (í, é, á, ú, ó,
ɔ́)
-Mandatory for monosyllabic CVC and disyllabic CVC/CVVC words
-For disyllabic words, only
one syllable may contain high tone.
-High tone is (mostly) assigned to the first vowel within the initial syllable. However, high tone may be assigned to the first vowel within the ultimate syllable.
-For trisyllabic words, high tone is (mostly) assigned to the ultimate syllable. However, high tone may be assigned to BOTH initial and ultimate syllables.
References
*Wondwosen Tesfaye Abire. 2006
''Aspects of Diraytata Morphology and Syntax: A Lexical-Functional Grammar Approach.'' University of Trondheim, doctoral thesis.
External links
*Klaus Wedekind
"Sociolinguistic Survey Report of the Languages of the Gawwada (Dullay), Diraasha (Gidole), Muusiye (Bussa) Areas"SIL Electronic Survey Reports: SILESR 2002-065 (contains a word-list of Dirasha, with 320 entries)
East Cushitic languages
Languages of Ethiopia
{{Ethiopia-stub