Nayi (also known as "Nao") is an
Omotic language of the
Afro-Asiatic language family spoken in western
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 ...
.
Most of the speakers of the language live in two separated areas. The largest grouping live in
Decha woreda
Districts of Ethiopia, also called woredas ( am, ወረዳ; ''woreda''), are the third level of the administrative divisions of Ethiopia – after ''zones'' and the '' regional states''.
These districts are further subdivided into a number of ...
of the
Keffa Zone. The nearest city to their region is
Bonga. A few in Dulkuma village of the Shoa Bench woreda, some in
Sheko woreda having moved there in 1976-1977 as a result of conflicts between local feudal lords and the military government (Aklilu 2002:4). In Decha, young people no longer speak the language.
The language is notable for its
retroflex consonant
A retroflex ( /ˈɹɛtʃɹoːflɛks/), apico-domal ( /əpɪkoːˈdɔmɪnəl/), or cacuminal () consonant is a coronal consonant where the tongue has a flat, concave, or even curled shape, and is articulated between the alveolar ridge and the h ...
s (Aklilu Yilma 1988), a striking feature shared with closely related
Dizi,
Sheko and nearby (but not closely related)
Bench. The language has 5 vowels that can be long or short. The question of the status of a short mid central vowel is still unresolved. There are three phonemic tones and syllabic nasal consonants. There are
ejective
In phonetics, ejective consonants are usually voiceless consonants that are pronounced with a glottalic egressive airstream. In the phonology of a particular language, ejectives may contrast with aspirated, voiced and tenuis consonants. Some ...
stops and affricates, but no
implosives
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. Ro ...
(Aklilu 2002:6,7).
Nayi, together with the
Dizi and
Sheko languages, is part of a cluster of languages variously called "Maji" or "
Dizoid".
Notes
References
*Aklilu Yilma. 1990. Two phonological processes in Nayi: palatalization and labialization. In Tadesse Beyene, Richard Pankhurst, Ahmed Zekaria, eds., ''Proceedings of the Firstr National Conference of Ethiopian Studies''. Addis Ababa: Addis Ababa University.
*Aklilu Yilma. 1994. "A sketch of the Nayi grammar." S.L.L.E. linguistic reports 16: 1-20.
*Aklilu Yilma. 2002
"Sociolinguistic survey report of the Nayi language of Ethiopia." SIL Electronic Survey Reports 2002-010.
* Aklilu Yilma and Ralph Siebert. 1995. "Survey of Chara, Dime, Melo and Nayi, part 1." S.L.L.E. linguistic reports 25: 2-8.
External links
Nayi basic lexicon at the Global Lexicostatistical Database
Languages of Ethiopia
Dizoid languages
{{AfroAsiatic-lang-stub