Ganza, also known as Ganzo or Koma, is an
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 com ...
language spoken in the
Al Kurumik District
Al Kurumik is a district
A district is a type of administrative division that, in some countries, is managed by the local government. Across the world, areas known as "districts" vary greatly in size, spanning regions or county, counties, sev ...
of the
Blue Nile (state)
Blue Nile ( ar, النيل الأزرق ') is one of the eighteen states of the Republic of the Sudan. It was established by presidential decree nº 3 in 1992 and is named after the Blue Nile River.
The region is host to around forty differen ...
in
Sudan and in the western
Benishangul-Gumuz region
Benishangul-Gumuz ( am, ቤንሻንጉል ጉሙዝ, Benšangul Gumuz) is a Regions of Ethiopia, regional state in northwestern Ethiopia to the border of Sudan. It was previously known as Region 6. The region's capital is Assosa. Following the ...
of
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 ...
, specifically in the village districts of Penishuba and Yabeldigis.
It also goes by the names Ganzo, Gwami, Koma, and Koma-Ganza.
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Phonology
Ganza does not utilize consonant length phonemically.vowel length
In linguistics, vowel length is the perceived length of a vowel sound: the corresponding physical measurement is duration. In some languages vowel length is an important phonemic factor, meaning vowel length can change the meaning of the word ...
is typically contrastive in Omotic languages
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 c ...
, Ganza does not have a clear contrast between long and short vowel phonemes. Instead, Ganza has predictable utterance-final vowel
lengthening and a set of monosyllabic words with double vowels.
References
*Smolders, Joshua. 2015. ''A Wordlist of Ganza''. Addis Ababa: SIL Ethiopia
Notes
External links
Link to ELAR documentation of Ganza and Ganza verb mophology
Languages of Ethiopia
Omotic languages
Mao languages
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