Zay (also Lak'i, Laqi) is an

Afroasiatic 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 ...

language of the Semitic branch 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 ...

. It is 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 ...

in the Ethiopian Semitic group. The Zay language has around 5,000 speakers known as the Zay, who inhabit

Gelila Torah reading (; ') is a Jewish religious tradition that involves the public reading of a set of passages from a Torah scroll. The term often refers to the entire ceremony of removing the scroll (or scrolls) from the Torah ark, chanting the a ...

and the other five islands and shores of

Lake Zway Hora-Dambal also known as Lake Zway or Dambal ( Oromo: ''Hora Dambal'', Amharic: ዟይ ሐይቅ) is one of the freshwater Rift Valley lakes of Ethiopia. It is located about 100 miles south of Addis Ababa, on the border between the Oromia and S ...

in the southern part of the country.

Language situation

Zay is an unwritten language. Most speakers are

multilingual Multilingualism is the use of more than one language, either by an individual speaker or by a group of speakers. It is believed that multilingual speakers outnumber monolingual speakers in the world's population. More than half of all ...

in other

, in the

Oromo language Oromo ( or ; Oromo: ''Afaan Oromoo''), in the linguistic literature of the early 20th century also called Galla (a name with a pejorative meaning and therefore rejected by the Oromo people), is an Afroasiatic language that belongs to the Cushiti ...

, and in

Amharic Amharic ( or ; (Amharic: ), ', ) is an Ethiopian Semitic language, which is a subgrouping within the Semitic branch of the Afroasiatic languages. It is spoken as a first language by the Amharas, and also serves as a lingua franca for all oth ...

. The language is geographically concentrated around Lake Zway; specifically, in Herera,

Meki Meki ( am, መቂ; om, Maqii) is a town in east-central Ethiopia. Located in the East Shewa Zone of the Oromia Region, it has a latitude and longitude of with an elevation of 1636 meters above sea level. Meki is the administrative center of Du ...

Ziway Batu ( om, Baatuu), formerly Zway or Ziway,endangered language An endangered language or moribund language is a language that is at risk of disappearing as its speakers die out or shift to speaking other languages. Language loss occurs when the language has no more native speakers and becomes a "dead lang ...

, with speakers migrating to the mainland adopting the

, and increasing use of Oromo by the younger generations on the Zay islands. Zay is 70% lexically similar with the

Siltʼe language Siltʼe (ስልጥኘ or የስልጤ አፍ ) is an Ethiopian Semitic language spoken in central Ethiopia. A member of the Afroasiatic family, its speakers are the Siltʼe, who mainly inhabit the Siltʼe Zone in the Southern Nations, Nation ...

, and 60% with Harari.

Grammar

The word order of Zay is SOV (subject–object–verb). Attributive

adjective In linguistics, an adjective ( abbreviated ) is a word that generally modifies a noun or noun phrase or describes its referent. Its semantic role is to change information given by the noun. Traditionally, adjectives were considered one of the ...

s precede the

noun A noun () is a word that generally functions as the name of a specific object or set of objects, such as living creatures, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, or ideas.Example nouns for: * Living creatures (including people, alive, ...

s they modify. Possessives also precede nouns. Zay is a

pro-drop language A pro-drop language (from "pronoun-dropping") is a language where certain classes of pronouns may be omitted when they can be pragmatically or grammatically inferable. The precise conditions vary from language to language, and can be quite int ...

, with required subject-marking on the verb. Zay has been greatly affected by contact it has had with the

. This contact has created a significant amount of lexical and grammatical change in Zay.Meyer, R. (2006). "The Zay Language (East-Gurage, Ethiopia)". Mainz University.

References

*Demeke, Grima A., & Meyer, Ronny. "Contact-induced language change in selected Ethiopian Semitic Languages." *Demissie, Ambaw (1990), ''The phonology of Zay: A generative approach''. M.A. thesis. Addis Ababa University. *Gardner, Simon. and Siebert, Ralph. (2001), "Sociolinguistic Survey Report of the Zay Language Area", SIL Electronic Survey Reports 2002-024:12. *Hetzron, Robert (1972), "Ethiopian Semitic: studies in classification (No. 2)". Manchester University Press. *Jordan, Linda; Netzley, Jillian; & Mohammed, Hussein (2011). "A Sociolinguistic Survey Report of the Zay People in Ethiopia". SIL Electronic Survey Reports 2011-046: 43, 2011-046. * Meyer, Ronny (2005), ''Das Zay: Deskriptive Grammatik einer Ostguragesprache (Äthiosemitisch)''. Grammatical Analyses of African Languages, vol. 25. Köln: Rüdiger Köppe. . *Meyer, Ronny. (2002), "Language Change in a Multilingual Society: The Influence of Oromo on the Lexicon of Zay". Institute of Language Studies, Addis Ababa University. *Meyer, Ronny (2002), "‘To be or not to be’ – Is there a present tense copula in Zay?" in: Baye Yimam, R. Pankhurst, D. Chapple, Yonas Admasu, A. Pankhurst, Birhanu Teferra (Hg.), Proceedings of the 14th International Conference of Ethiopian Studies, 6–11 November 2000, Addis Ababa. Addis Ababa 2002, 1798–1808 *Shikur, Getu (1999), ''Morphology of Zay''. M.A. thesis. Addis Ababa University. *Vinson, Michael A. (2012), "The struggle for recognition: a critical ethnographic study of the Zay." African Studies Center, Universiteit Leiden. *

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 ...

(1999), ''Zway Ethiopic Documents''. Aethiopische Forschungen, Band 51. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. .

External links

Endangered Languages profile for ZayAudio recordings of Zay
{{Authority control Transverse Ethiopian Semitic languages Languages of Ethiopia Subject–object–verb languages Endangered languages of Africa Severely endangered languages

Language situation

Grammar

References

Further reading

External links