The Mesmes language is an

extinct Extinction is the termination of a kind of organism or of a group of kinds (taxon), usually a species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of the species, although the capacity to breed and ...

West Gurage language, one of the

Ethiopian Semitic languages Ethiopian Semitic (also Ethio-Semitic, Ethiosemitic, Ethiopic or Abyssinian) is a family of languages spoken in Ethiopia, Eritrea and Sudan. They form the western branch of the South Semitic languages, itself a sub-branch of Semitic, part of th ...

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 ...

. There are still many people who claim the Mesmes ethnic identity, but none who speak the language. The last speaker of the language was interviewed by a language survey team when he was approximately 80 years old. He had not spoken the language for 30 years, having nobody to speak it with since his brother died. The Mesmes have shifted to speaking the

Hadiyya language Hadiyya (speakers call it Hadiyyisa, others sometimes call it ''Hadiyigna'', ''Adiya'', ''Adea'', ''Adiye'', ''Hadia'', ''Hadiya'', ''Hadya'') is the language of the Hadiya people of Ethiopia. It is a Highland East Cushitic language of the Afro ...

. However, they still maintain some cultural distinctives, including their own style of house architecture. The

comparative method In linguistics, the comparative method is a technique for studying the development of languages by performing a feature-by-feature comparison of two or more languages with common descent from a shared ancestor and then extrapolating backwards t ...

has shown that the language is most closely related to the Inor variety of Gurage.Ahland (2010), p. 88

References

*Ahland, Michael Bryan. (2010). ''Language death in Mesmes''. Dallas: SIL International and the University of Texas at Arlington. *Bustorf, Dirk. (2007). "Mäsmäs”, in: Siegbert Uhlig (ed.):

Encyclopaedia Aethiopica The ''Encyclopaedia Aethiopica'' (''EAe'') is a basic English-language encyclopaedia for Ethiopian and Eritrean studies. The ''Encyclopaedia Aethiopica'' provides information in all fields of the discipline, i.e. anthropology, archaeology, ethno ...

, vol. 3: D-Ha, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, p. 838-39.

Notes

Extinct languages of Africa Languages of Ethiopia Ethiopian Semitic languages {{Semitic-lang-stub