The Gafat language is an extinct South Ethiopic language once spoken by the

Gafat people The Gafat (Amharic: ጋፋት) are an extinct ethnic group that once inhabited present day western Ethiopia. They spoke the Gafat language, an extinct South Ethiopic grouping within the Semitic subfamily of the Afroasiatic languages and closely ...

along the

Blue Nile The Blue Nile (; ) is a river originating at Lake Tana in Ethiopia. It travels for approximately through Ethiopia and Sudan. Along with the White Nile, it is one of the two major tributaries of the Nile and supplies about 85.6% of the water to ...

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 ...

, and later, speakers pushed south of

Gojjam Gojjam ( ''gōjjām'', originally ጐዛም ''gʷazzam'', later ጐዣም ''gʷažžām'', ጎዣም ''gōžžām'') is a historical province in northwestern Ethiopia, with its capital city at Debre Marqos. Gojjam's earliest western boundary ex ...

in what is now

East Welega Zone East Welega ( om, Wallagga Bahaa) is one of the zones in the central Oromia Region of Ethiopia. This administrative division acquired its name from the former province of Welega. Towns and cities in this zone include Nekemte. East Welega is bound ...

. Gafat was related to the Harari language and Eastern

Gurage languages The Gurage languages (Gurage: ጉራጌ), also known as Guragie, is a dialect-continuum language, which belong to the Semitic branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They are spoken by the Gurage people, who inhabit the Gurage Zone within t ...

. The records of this language are extremely sparse. There is a translation of the Song of Songs written in the 17th or 18th Century held at the Bodleian Library. Charles Beke collected a word list in the early 1840s with difficulty from the few who knew the language, having found that "the rising generation seem to be altogether ignorant of it; and those grown-up persons who profess to speak it are anything but familiar with it." The most recent accounts of this language are the reports of

Wolf Leslau __NOTOC__ Wolf Leslau ( yi, וולף לסלאו; born November 14, 1906 in Krzepice, Vistula Land, Poland; died November 18, 2006 in Fullerton, California) was a scholar of Semitic languages and one of the foremost authorities on Semitic langua ...

, who visited the region in 1947 and after considerable work was able to find a total of four people who could still speak the language.

Edward Ullendorff Edward Ullendorff (1920–2011) was a British scholar and historian. He was a prominent figure in Ethiopian Studies and also contributed work on the Semitic languages. Biography Born on 25 January 1920 in Zurich, Switzerland, Ullendorff was e ...

, in his brief exposition on Gafat, concludes that as of the time of his writing, "one may ... expect that it has now virtually breathed its last."Ullendorff, Edward. ''The Ethiopians: An Introduction to Country and People, Second Edition'' (London: Oxford University Press, 1965), p. 131.

Notes

Bibliography

* Adelung, Johann Christoph. (1812). ''Mithridates, oder allgemeine Sprachkunde''. Berlin. ol. 3, p. 124-125: the same page from the Gafat text of the Song of Songs as in Bruce 1804 below * Beke, Charles Tilstone. (1846). "On the Languages and Dialects of Abyssinia and the Countries to the South", in: ''Proceedings of the Philological Society'' 2 (London), pp. 89–107. * Bruce, James. (1804). ''

Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile, In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772 and 1773 ''Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile, In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772 and 1773'' is a multi-volume account by the Scottish traveller James Bruce (1730–94) of his journeys in the Horn of Africa, which includes an eye-witness ...

''. 2nd ed. Edinburgh. ol. 2, pp. 491–499: "Vocabulary of the Amharic, Falashan, Gafat, Agow and Tcheretch Agow Languages"; vol. 7, plate III: a page from the Gafat text of the Song of Songs * Leslau, Wolf (1944), "The Position of Gafat in Ethiopic", in ''Language'' 20, pp. 56–65. * Leslau, Wolf. (1945). ''Gafat Documents: Records of a South-Ethiopic Language''. American Oriental Series, no. 28. New Haven. * Leslau, Wolf. (1956). ''Etudes descriptive et comparative du gafat (éthiopien méridional)''. Paris: C. Klincksieck. * Ludolf, Hiob, ''Historia Aethiopica''. Francofurti ad Moenum. here are 3 sentences in Gafat with Latin translation in chapter 10, §60 * Franz Praetorius. (1879). ''Die amharische Sprache''. Halle. pp. 13–14.

External links

Gafat Documents: Records of a South Ethiopic Language (1945) by Leslau
Extinct languages of Africa Languages of Ethiopia Semitic languages {{Semitic-lang-stub