Sebat Bet ("Seven houses") is an
Afroasiatic language
The Afroasiatic languages (or Afro-Asiatic), also known as Hamito-Semitic, or Semito-Hamitic, and sometimes also as Afrasian, Erythraean or Lisramic, are a language family of about 300 languages that are spoken predominantly in the geographic su ...
spoken in
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 ...
.
Overview
One of the
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 ...
, Sebat Bet is divided into several dialects. The latter are spoken in the western
Gurage Region:
*
Chaha (Cheha) is spoken in
Cheha and is the best studied of these varieties
*
Ezha (Eza, Izha) is spoken in
Ezhana Wolene Ezhana Wolene ("Ezha and Wolene") was one of the 77 woredas in the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples' Region of Ethiopia. This woreda was named after two of the sub-groups of the Sebat Bet Gurage, the Ezha and the Wolene-Worriro. Part of ...
*
Muher is spoken in the mountains north of Cheha and Ezhana Wolene
*
Geta
Geta may refer to:
Places
*Geta (woreda), a woreda in Ethiopia's Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples' Region
*Geta, Åland, a municipality in Finland
*Geta, Nepal, a town in Attariya Municipality, Kailali District, Seti Zone, Nepal
*Get ...
is spoken in
Geta
Geta may refer to:
Places
*Geta (woreda), a woreda in Ethiopia's Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples' Region
*Geta, Åland, a municipality in Finland
*Geta, Nepal, a town in Attariya Municipality, Kailali District, Seti Zone, Nepal
*Get ...
*
Gumer (Gwemarra, Gʷəmarə), spoken in
Gumer
*
Inor (Enemor), spoken in
Enemorina Eaner
:*
Endegegn and the extinct
Mesmes language are sometimes considered subdialects of Inor.
Notes
Further reading
* Leslau, Wolf. 1997. "Chaha (Gurage) Phonology" in Kaye, Alan S. (ed.): Phonologies of Asia and Africa 1. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns. pp. 373–397.
*Rose, Sharon. 2007. "Chaha (Gurage) Morphology" in Kaye, Alan D. (ed.): Morphologies of Africa and Asia 1. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns. pp. 403–427.
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
Chaha
Languages of Ethiopia
Outer Ethiopian Semitic languages
{{Semitic-lang-stub