Ganza, also known as Ganzo or Koma, 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 in the Al Kurumik District of the Blue Nile (state) in

Sudan Sudan ( or ; ar, السودان, as-Sūdān, officially the Republic of the Sudan ( ar, جمهورية السودان, link=no, Jumhūriyyat as-Sūdān), is a country in Northeast Africa. It shares borders with the Central African Republic t ...

and in the western Benishangul-Gumuz 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 ...

, specifically in the village districts of Penishuba and Yabeldigis. It also goes by the names Ganzo, Gwami, Koma, and Koma-Ganza.

Phonology

Ganza does not utilize consonant length phonemically. Although

vowel length In linguistics, vowel length is the perceived length of a vowel sound: the corresponding physical measurement is duration. In some languages vowel length is an important phonemic factor, meaning vowel length can change the meaning of the word ...

is typically contrastive in

Omotic languages 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 ...

, Ganza does not have a clear contrast between long and short vowel phonemes. Instead, Ganza has predictable utterance-final vowel lengthening and a set of monosyllabic words with double vowels.

References

*Smolders, Joshua. 2015. ''A Wordlist of Ganza''. Addis Ababa: SIL Ethiopia

Notes

External links

Link to ELAR documentation of Ganza and Ganza verb mophology
Languages of Ethiopia Omotic languages Mao languages {{AfroAsiatic-lang-stub