Anfillo (also known as Mao or Southern Mao) is a Northern

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 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 Er ...

by a few hundred people. The term Anfillo is used to refer both to the language and the people found in a small community in the Anfillo

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 ...

, part of the

Mirab Welega Zone West Welega Zone ( om, Wallagga Lixaa) is a zone in the western part of Oromia Region, Ethiopia. This zone is named after the former province of Welega, whose western part lay in the area West Welega now occupies. West Wellega is bordered on the ...

. The language is on the verge of extinction as it is spoken only by adults above the age of sixty. All younger generations have shifted to Western Oromo as of 2007. Anfillo has five

vowel A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (l ...

s and about 22

consonant In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are and pronounced with the lips; and pronounced with the front of the tongue; and pronounced ...

s. Long vowels and consonants do occur and may have phonemic value. The basic word order is subject–object–verb. Nouns follow their modifier. Verbs are inflected for tense, aspect and

mood Mood may refer to: *Mood (psychology), a relatively long lasting emotional state Music *The Mood, a British pop band from 1981 to 1984 * Mood (band), hip hop artists * ''Mood'' (Jacquees album), 2016 * ''Moods'' (Barbara Mandrell album), 1978 ...

. Three tenses are marked morphologically: present, past, and future.

Gender Gender is the range of characteristics pertaining to femininity and masculinity and differentiating between them. Depending on the context, this may include sex-based social structures (i.e. gender roles) and gender identity. Most cultures us ...

and

number A number is a mathematical object used to count, measure, and label. The original examples are the natural numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and so forth. Numbers can be represented in language with number words. More universally, individual numbers ...

are expressed lexically.

Notes

References

* Amanuel Alemayehu (2001) 'Noun Phrase in Anfillo' (unpublished B.A. thesis, Addis Abeba University) * Gebre Bizuneh (1994) 'The Phonology of Anfillo' (unpublished M.A. thesis, Addis Abeba University) * Goshu, Debela & Demeke, Girma Awgichew

005 ''005'' is a 1981 arcade game by Sega. They advertised it as the first of their RasterScan Convert-a-Game series, designed so that it could be changed into another game in minutes "at a substantial savings". It is one of the first examples of ...

'Some points on Anfillo' (unpublished handout, ''International Conference on Endangered Ethiopian Languages'', Addis Ababa 27–30 April 2005). * Grottanelli, Vinigi L. 1940. I Mao (Missione etnografica nel Uollega occidentale). Rome: Reale Accademia d'Italia. * Yigezu, Moges & Yehualashet (1995) 'Anfillo: a sketch of grammar and lexicon', ''Afrikanistisch Arbeitspapiere'', 43. Cologne: University of Cologne/Institute of African Studies. * Yigezu, Moges (1995b) 'Dying twice: the case of Anfillo languages', ''Afrikanistisch Arbeitspapiere'', 43. Cologne: University of Cologne/Institute of African Studies. * Wedekind, Klaus & Wedekind, Charlotte (2002) 'Sociolinguistic Survey Report on Languages of the Asosa-Begi-Komosha area, Part II'
SIL Electronic Survey Report 2002-055
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